[LargeFormat] Oh My Goodness Part II

[Mark]

A while ago, I taught specialty diving courses.  One of the courses that we
would teach was ice diving.  A big part of ice diving is keeping track of
where the hole in the ice is - and to practice this, we would dive in a
swimming pool with the cover on it.   When diving in a pool with the cover
on, you can adjust your bouyancy so that you are very bouyant, and walk
around, upside down on the cover of the pool - it doesn't take long (5-10)
minutes before your brain convinces you that you are right side up, then you
walk over to your hole, and try stepping out - as you step into the hole,
you feel your foot being pushed back with the pressure getting greater the
deeper you step into the hole - a very wierd feeling!



Karl Wolz wrote:

> I recall watching a movie wa-a-ay back in high school on the way that
> the brain processes image information.  I recall that a volunteer was
> fitted with special prismatic eyeglasses which turned everything upside
> down.  After a fairly short time (a week or two, as I recall) everything
> was turned right side up for him by his wonderful brain.  They then
> removed the glasses, and it took him several days to turn things back to
> the way that God intended.
>
> I've often wondered what would happen to the poor guy if the cycle were
> repeated many times - would he be able to tell "which end was up"?
>
> Karl Wolz
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: largeformat-admin@f32.net [mailto:largeformat-admin@f32.net] On
> Behalf Of rstein
> Sent: Friday, October 25, 2002 7:55 AM
> To: largeformat@f32.net
> Subject: [LargeFormat] Oh My Goodness Part II
>
> Dear Friends,
>
>     It was with a small sense of shock that I realised that I have
> passed a
> milestone in my photography. Not as much shock as my friend Syd who
> passed a
> kidney stone, but still....
>
>     I was looking at the back of the Linhof the other Saturday as I
> lined
> up a number of WW1 renactors for regimental photos and I realised that
> the
> images were not upside down.
>
>     This was alarming - they had always been so in previous years -
> people
> who looked under the focussing cloth remarked upon it and I gave the
> conventional explanation with the little light ray diagram. Shaken, I
> borrowed a Mamiya C22 from my servant and looked down into the focussing
> screen.
>
>     Worse yet - the images were not reversed right to left.
>
>     I was just about to ring up to my local GP for a brain scan when I
> suddenly realised I had passed through the eye/brain barrier and had
> forgotten that what I see is optical shorthand for what really exists.
>
>      The same thing happened in dental school. We all had our new
> operative
> kits with the mirrors and the probes and for months we prodded and
> peered
> into phantom heads and nervous charity patients trying to coordinate our
> eyes and hands. And then one day the mirrors disappeared and we could do
> everything reversed as naturally as direct vision - switching
> imperceptibly
> from one view of the universe to the reverse without detecting any
> anomaly
> in our own minds. No-one taught us - it just happened.
>
>      I think the same has occurred with the ground glass screens. If I
> look
> carefully now I can see that the subjects are upside down in the Linhof
> but
> if I am just working instinctively, they are right side up. Now I am
> waiting
> for my eyes to complain about the general view because it doesn't have a
> K2
> filter over it.
>
>      Uncle Dick
>
> _______________________________________________
> LargeFormat mailing list
> LargeFormat@f32.net
> http://www.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/largeformat
>
> _______________________________________________
> LargeFormat mailing list
> LargeFormat@f32.net
> http://www.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/largeformat