[HN Gopher] Photos taken inside musical instruments
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Photos taken inside musical instruments
Author : worik
Score : 954 points
Date : 2025-05-30 20:32 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.dpreview.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.dpreview.com)
| pimlottc wrote:
| Many more fantastic photos at his website:
|
| https://www.charlesbrooks.info/
| HelloUsername wrote:
| Did you read the very last sentence of the article?
| sandspar wrote:
| Sometimes it must be quite fun to be a bug.
| platevoltage wrote:
| underrated comment.
| user3939382 wrote:
| Refer to the first vignette in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs for a
| nice guitar view.
| rwmj wrote:
| The violins looks like the lower deck of a galleon. cf
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Victory#/media/File:Victor...
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| It's cool to see how much the older double bass and violin have
| been repaired. Those square/flat pyramid pieces of wood are
| cleats, which were added by a luthier to repair and secure
| cracks.
| analog31 wrote:
| The repairs are hard to discern from the outside...
|
| https://m.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10162184681342501&vani.
| ..
|
| The only pic I could find.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| Here's a good step-by-step article on how cleats are made and
| installed, from stock to installation:
| https://trianglestrings.com/making-installing-cleats/
| hermitcrab wrote:
| As the son of a mariner who was born a few miles from HSM
| Victory, I feel honour bond to point out that HMS Victory is
| not techically a galleon.
| rwmj wrote:
| Honour bound is the best kind of bound.
| colordrops wrote:
| Reminds me of the game The Room, especially the VR version, where
| you shrink down and go inside a pipe organ.
| susam wrote:
| A little game for all of you: On Firefox or Chrome, go to
| Developer Tools (F12) > Console and execute:
| document.querySelectorAll('p').forEach(e => e.style.opacity = 0)
|
| Now without the text visible anymore, try and guess which musical
| instrument each picture represents. Then reload the page, enjoy
| the article, and check how many you got right. What's your score
| out of 8? I scored 5.
| dietr1ch wrote:
| No need to reload, you can hover over the image and read its
| filename to see the answers right after you guessed.
| ctxc wrote:
| Did you get the viola/violin/bass right?
| susam wrote:
| Those are the three I got wrong. I got the other five right.
| ctxc wrote:
| Haha! Yeah those were confusing.
| analog31 wrote:
| Hint: Basses have the most wreckage.
|
| -- Bassist
| gnabgib wrote:
| Previously - different sources (89 points, 3 years ago, 19
| comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32862697
|
| (70 points, 4 years ago)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29389442
| hinkley wrote:
| I wonder if he would have been better off making a device to hold
| a small mirror steady and used a telephoto lens pointed at it
| from one of the f holes.
|
| It says he had a 5 mm hole to work with. That would pass an 8
| gauge wire with plenty of room to maneuver. Mount a mirror to the
| end, thread a two or three foot wire through the hole from the
| inside out, clamp it to a surface the instrument is sitting in to
| keep it from moving, and set up your camera from a low angle and
| the light positioned to not cast a shadow.
|
| Alternately you could J hook a long, large diameter scope, and
| composite two shots with the cable visible on opposite sides of
| each picture.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Sounds plausible, do you have a telephoto and a string
| instrument (or friends who own the aforementioned)?
| hinkley wrote:
| I'm not sure I have the patience to try to thread a long wire
| in and then back out again. Ten years ago I might have tried.
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| The challenge would probably be stability and alignment
| hinkley wrote:
| If he's compositing a thousand shots due to low light levels
| from the tiny sensor, he already has that problem.
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| Endoscope photography?
| ubj wrote:
| Beautiful photos! I'd love to see a concert hall designed to look
| like something from this gallery.
| fatboy wrote:
| I remember around 25 years ago being in the big music hall in
| Philadelphia and feeling a bit like I was inside a giant cello.
|
| The cheapest seats were in the coolest place architecturally
| because you were right up at the back, closest to the ceiling,
| which really was a bit like in these instrument photos.
|
| Some pictures here from a quick search:
| https://voithandmactavish.com/projects/the-kimmel-center/
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| Imagine a concert hall where the architecture mimics the ribbed
| interior of a violin or the layered gears of a grand piano
| action
| _def wrote:
| Perfect scenery for a FMV point n click adventure
| e40 wrote:
| I thought dpreview closed down. Happy to see it didn't. Who saved
| them?
| atombender wrote:
| Gear Patrol: https://www.gearpatrol.com/about/a44214660/gear-
| patrol-dprev...
| latexr wrote:
| https://www.dpreview.com/site-news/8298318614/dpreview-com-l...
|
| https://www.gearpatrol.com/about/a44214660/gear-patrol-dprev...
|
| https://www.gearpatrol.com/about/about-gear-patrol/
| wilfredk wrote:
| When I look at the inside of an instrument I can 'hear'the music
| playing.
| coreyp_1 wrote:
| I purchased two of his images a few years ago, and I'm very happy
| with the results. Looks like he has a few more images now, and I
| might buy another one. :)
| righthand wrote:
| Do the inside of a concertina or accordion you cowards!
| hermitcrab wrote:
| "A gentleman is a man who can play the accordion, but doesn't."
| yard2010 wrote:
| This is so beautiful. It contrasts really well with the cancerous
| viagra/fungi ai ads in this page!
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| And the fact that the results look like alien architecture or
| dystopian cities? That's the cherry on top
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| It's interesting how irregular the inside of the violins are -
| patches, struts, asymmetries, differing textures, etc. I guess
| these all contribute to the normal violin sound, but it makes me
| wonder if a perfectly symmetrical interior (& exterior - anything
| contributing to resonances) wouldn't sound better?
| cowanon2222 wrote:
| > if a perfectly symmetrical interior (& exterior - anything
| contributing to resonances) wouldn't sound better
|
| I'm guessing it would likely look more pure on a frequency
| plot, but sound sterile if things were perfectly symmetrical.
| The little imperfections, materials, and design tradeoffs give
| each instrument its unique tone color (timbre). Often,
| musicians will chase a certain builder and year, and even
| within that, only a few instruments will be considered "great".
| For example, guitarists chasing the perfect Les Paul or most
| classical violinists chasing a Stradivarius.
| CPLX wrote:
| In acoustics symmetrical and parallel surfaces lead to what are
| called standing waves, which heavily emphasizes specific
| frequencies. For the most part in things that are musical
| (instruments, recording studios) you don't want that. Except of
| course where that's the whole point, like the heads of a drum.
|
| There's a lot more subtlety to it, but in general, variation
| will produce richer more complex timbre.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Yes, but I suppose the general shape of a violin, curvy,
| pinched waist, bowed top and bottom surfaces, already avoids
| those kind of overly simple/concentrated resonances. On a
| side note, I wonder how much changing any of these shape
| factors affect the sound? Which are most critical? What
| happens without the pinched waist, or if it is made even
| narrower?
| izzydata wrote:
| Why do these photos feel like they are so large? Is it just the
| lack of anything to reference size? I feel like if I stuck my
| phone inside of something small and took a picture it wouldn't
| look like this.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I think that's the most interesting part! From the article:
|
| > Every part of his process is intentional because he doesn't
| want the images to look like miniatures. The focus stacking
| helps him avoid the typical aesthetic of macro photography by
| reducing the amount of background blur and focal compression.
| Creating an image that looks like it was taken with an ultra-
| wide-angle lens also results in leading lines we associate with
| normal-sized things, like streets and buildings, which tricks
| your brain into thinking the subject is not small. He also uses
| lighting to make it look like the sun is shining down,
| emphasizing the feeling that you are standing inside something.
| geonnave wrote:
| It's basically the opposite effect of tilt-shift photography
| [1].
|
| See an example: https://i0.wp.com/digital-photography-
| school.com/wp-content/...
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilt%E2%80%93shift_photography
| susam wrote:
| Typically, when we photograph small objects at very close
| range, only a narrow depth of field is in focus. The rest of
| the image appears blurred. The further other parts of the scene
| are from the focal plane, the more they blur. This shallow
| focus helps us to understand scale and depth.
|
| However, in these pictures, the artist has cleverly avoided the
| blurring effect by combining multiple pictures taken at
| different focal distances into a single image. The resulting
| pictures look crisp and clear throughout, and as a result,
| lacks the usual depth cues we are accustomed to in macro
| photography. That's why these pictures resemble photographs of
| large halls!
|
| A similar effect can be observed in ray tracing as well, where
| we are free to construct entirely imaginary scenes. While
| defining a scene that we want to be perceived as small, we need
| to remember to add focal blur [1] carefully. If we forget to do
| so, the resulting scene can produce the exact opposite
| impression, that of a vast space.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/susam/pov25#focal-blur
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Despite being physically quite close to the subject, the ratio
| of subject-size-in-frame to distance-to-subject is usually
| still quite small (the angle of view for macro lenses is
| generally much smaller than what the focal length at infinity
| would suggest).
|
| So for us, macro shots tend to have two characteristics: 1.)
| perspective is approaching an isometric drawing 2.) usually
| narrow depth of field.
|
| These shots on the other hand were made with a very wide field
| of view and focus stacking produces a deep depth of field. I'm
| sure that if you worked out the angles and distances in e.g.
| the violin shot then the ratios will be basically the same as
| your typical 2.5 story architecture shot or subway architecture
| done with something in the 14-20mm FF range. Because the
| photographer went to great lengths to make it look like that.
|
| There's also other cues, like the height of the camera relative
| to the floor and ceiling of the room, and of course the light.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Well that was amazing.
| fHr wrote:
| damn that is cool
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(page generated 2025-05-31 23:00 UTC)