Pinhole of partial eclipse

hey pinholers,

this is a post from the Cinematography mailing list I belong to. I thought
some of you might be interested in this, particulaly in the submission of a
photograph to be (potentially) included in this VERY well respected
magazine.

gb mcneill

Very interesting, because I am looking for a particular photograph of a
partial eclipse to illustrate a piece I have written for the 'From my
Library' series I have been writing for The American Cinematographer
Magazine. For those who may have seen the first one in the September
issue (there are others upcoming in the November and January issues) the
idea is to dip into old books that I have in my library and do 'book
reviews of 100ish year old film books

For a forthcoming piece on the History of Projection I start with a
quote from Volume 1, No. 1 of the Journal of what is now the Royal
Television Society, published in Sept 1938. (it is one of the real
treasures of my library) The very first major article (believe it or
not) is a history of optical projection which starts off (if the ACM
will excuse me leaking a preview)

"In Volume 1, No. 1 of the Journal of the Television Society, published
in September 1928, (the first ever monthly journal devoted to
television) the first major article, by Professor Cheshire of the
Imperial College, London, was devoted to Optical Projection:
It began with the question:
"Why is it that during an eclipse of the sun the patches of light, which
are found on the ground beneath a plane tree, and which are formed by
rays which have passed through the spaces between the leaves, take the
shape of the eclipsed sun?" ... "In these words did Aristotle, about 350
B. C. propound his famous problem concerning the optical projection of
pictures. Nearly 2000 years elapsed before a satisfactory solution of
this problem was given"

The answer, as we now know, was pinhole projection caused by gaps
between leaves. Anyway, in the TV Journal there is an illustration of
crescent shaped blobs of light beneath a tree taken on Bombay many years
ago. Regrettably the quality if the image is not good enough to
reproduce in a 2003 edition of the ACM so I have had to make do with a
picture of every-day oval shape blobs I took beneath a tree in Hyde
Park.

So, I wonder if anyone in Australia who is in the eclipse zone on
December 4th would be kind enough to take a copyright-free photograph
for me, not of the eclipse but of the pinhole image of it on the street
below a tree ... which is the way ancient astronomers used to study
eclipses. If I get it in time I would like to use it as an illustration
(with credit, of course!).

For anyone interested in the subject of pinhole projection, during my
researches I came across an interesting fairly new book on the subject,
'Pinhole Photography' by Eric Brenner, Published by Focal Press, 1999,
ISBN 0-240-80350-7'. I thoroughly recommend it if for no other reason
that it has in it one of the most interesting bits of useless
information I have come across for a long time ... How it was that Pope
Gregory XIII in 1580 was convinced that the calendar was ten days out of
sync with the sun?

... 'Tell me more' do I hear you say? But that, dear CMLers is for
another night (or subject heading?)

Sincerely

David Samuelson

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Received on Thu Oct 24 13:43:52 2002