Do You Know What Lightning Really Looks Like?

nytimes.com

22 points·johnny313··4 comments

Is the picture really accurate, though? I thought pictures like that had a relatively long exposure time, so while it's accurate for its exposure period, it's not really what a person would perceive in an instant which looks more like seeing the branches flash at different times in a sort of electrical dance. Obviously it's difficult to capture such motion in an image.

Also: lightning is bright and fast. It's difficult to see the branches that aren't as bright as the brightest few.

Yes, it can simply point to the different capabilities of human vision vs. the photo camera. So this explanation from the article appears to be false:

"Their research points to how cultural legacies can distort our perceptions of natural phenomena, even those that we encounter with our own eyes."

If we don't actually see all the branches but need cameras, the painters did paint what they were able to see with their "own eyes."

Also what the first photographer wanted to disprove wasn't the number of branches:

http://journalpanorama.org/capturing-joves-autograph-late-ni...

"According to Jennings’ own personal narrative, he set out to photograph lightning in order to prove the inaccuracy of the “awkward angular zig-zag” populating artworks. In his scrapbook, he wrote, “To my eye [lightning] appeared with an infinite variety of outline; all of them graceful, none zig-zag.”"

And I wonder where did they source the 400 pictures of real lightnings from. There might be a selection effect so that only the most spectacular are published. In addition to what others already mentioned, that photographers constantly use several means (lenses, exposure, films) to enhance the pictures beyond what the human eye can perceive.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com