RE: New Tesla Black and White Gallery

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Mccauley, Daniel H" <daniel.h.mccauley-at-lmco-dot-com> 

 >  > Its not so much digital dropped to greyscale, but rather a LEVELS
 >  > adjustment to correct for underexposure.  Also the
 >
 > Hmm, that would explain some noise.
 >
 >  > pixelation is due to shooting at ISO 1000+ with my Canon
 > digital SLR.
 >
 > 1000 is extreme on a digital camera, and makes for noisy pics.
 >
 >  > Even with a f/2.8L lens, the relatively short
 >  > exposures tend to be underexposed.
 >
 > How do they turn out with a longer exposure and less extreme
 > ISO that may in
 > fact just be some gain trick inside the camera?


ISO 1000 is extreme on both digital and film cameras.  I get similar
graininess when I shoot with
both 1000 ISO film and 1000 ISO digital.  In fact, the high digital ISO
is actually becoming much better
very fast nowadays to increasingly better sensor technology and
post-processing.  This is particularly evident
in the CMOS type sensors as opposed to the much noisier CCD type sensors
which are used most digital cameras.

You can shoot tesla coils at a lower ISO, but either need to shoot
relative long exposures, or have a tesla coil
running at high power (>5kW) so that the arcs are very bright and white.
Smaller coils (such as my 3kW unit)
and especially NST powered tesla coils, have a predominant violet
(violet to UV) tint to the streamers.  The optical
properties of glass cause those wavelenghts to also be attenuated
ultimately reducing the sensitivity of the
camera at those colors.