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Re: Streamer Color



Original poster: Jeff Larson <jeff@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Hi,
I assume you using a digital camera? I have seen this affect before with my digital camera. The camera in total darkness does not detect enough light to set the
white balance properly or the light is not what the camera interprets.
The sparks come out looking brownish. You have brownish and blueish sparks above. I am not sure why you have both. Maybe the blue sparks are hotter power arcs which are actually supposed to be white or brighter blue? I saw a major difference in spark color in particular sequence of shots from the Ed Wingate's teslathon. If you look at the following pictures from Terry Blake's site you will notice the color change in the coil discharge. In the first photo IMG4707 you will see a nice purple spark and in photo IMG 4712 a brownish spark. Also the first photo the TC is being illuminated by another camera's auto focus illuminator (the red light). It seems that this helped the setting of the white balance on the canon 20D. This clue is what I needed to discovered this problem with the white balance.
http://www.tb3.com/tesla/ratcb2005/pages/IMG_4707.html
http://www.tb3.com/tesla/ratcb2005/pages/IMG_4712.html

I have played around with some raw photos from my canon 20D that exhibited this brownish spark characteristic and I discovered that I could shift the white balance and correct this color problem. I suggest that you try setting your white balance manually when shooting coil photos. This is what I am going to do from now on. I am not exactly sure of what the white balance should be other than about 4000k to 5000k for the color setting. Or if your camera doesn't do that, try the florescent light setting. I plan on doing some more experimenting to see what works best.

Sorry for running off on a tangent.

Jeff Larson

Tesla list wrote:

Original poster: stork <stork@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Can anyone explain the difference in color of the upper and lower streamers in

http://silicon-arcana.com/TC1/1_BeforeAndDuring.jpg

Stork