Inverted Plane

I saw this image of a plane as seen through raindrops on a window posted on 9Gag.

How do you explain why the image of the plane in the raindrop seems to be in the opposite direction of the actual plane?

Is this just a massive photoshop hack?

#Mechanics

Note by Calvin Lin
6 years, 4 months ago

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1 vote

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Comments

s s

U Z - 6 years, 4 months ago

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This was photoshopped too!

Michael Mendrin - 6 years, 4 months ago

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How can you guess about that ? I posted it earlier in a note.

U Z - 6 years, 4 months ago

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@U Z Oh, somebody stop me from any more sarcasm. But thanks for posting this excellent GIF, I've seen it before. it does illustrate the optical inversion effect very effectively.

Michael Mendrin - 6 years, 4 months ago

haha :D

Soumo Mukherjee - 6 years, 4 months ago

fabulous method.......

Rishav Kumar - 6 years, 4 months ago

This might help to explain the cause of inversion

plano convex lens plano convex lens

Water droplet acts like a plano convex lens.


This might be photoshopped because to get that type of shot is extremely difficult.

Krishna Sharma - 6 years, 4 months ago

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I'm pretty sure it was shot with a telephoto lens. And I'm pretty sure this effect took a number of tries to get it right. I'll bet that wherever this was shot, planes were probably flying overhead regularly, like on an approach path towards an airport.

Michael Mendrin - 6 years, 4 months ago

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Another not-so-impossible possibility is that the photographer's a rich photography-loving guy who owns a lot of planes and hired pilots.

Jubayer Nirjhor - 6 years, 4 months ago

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@Jubayer Nirjhor yeah.. another possibility could be

Soumo Mukherjee - 6 years, 4 months ago

the photographer must be a genius

just for debate: the flying plane is far away from the window pane. So it is very much possible according to me to get that kind of inverted image. What do you say?

Soumo Mukherjee - 6 years, 4 months ago

inversion inversion

Here's a photo I took depicting inversion.

Guiseppi Butel - 6 years, 4 months ago

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wow! just wow!... so can the photo Calvin Lin posted be real ...????

What are those purple lines?

Soumo Mukherjee - 6 years, 4 months ago

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I do certainly believe that it was a real photo without any tampering by digital means.

Guiseppi Butel - 6 years, 4 months ago

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@Guiseppi Butel The purple lines join the various parts of the inverted image to the actual scene outside the window. One line points to the butterfly doodad stuck on the windowpane.

Guiseppi Butel - 6 years, 4 months ago

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@Guiseppi Butel That's a wise thing you did there. Well to me there's one line that connects the head of the butterfly to an edge of the window pane....let me have a look at it again... perhaps both of them may be coincident...

Soumo Mukherjee - 6 years, 4 months ago

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@Soumo Mukherjee The wine glass is closer to the window than the camera therefore it "sees" objects on the outside which are not visible at the camera's position.

Guiseppi Butel - 6 years, 4 months ago

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@Guiseppi Butel yes...you are right.

Soumo Mukherjee - 6 years, 4 months ago

@Guiseppi Butel Yes, somewhere, but I also believe that it is very much probable that the photo is real.

Soumo Mukherjee - 6 years, 4 months ago

It's like this one p2 p2 Made by this position of the camera: p1 p1 Maybe the camera in the plane's photo was taken upwards or it's just the photo of a plane in the table.

Axel Amador Trujano - 6 years, 4 months ago

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How is it multicolored? It looks like a plate of red balls...

Calvin Lin Staff - 6 years, 4 months ago

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I think he meant this was the way the picture was taken, not the actual setup for the original picture

Joshua Daniel - 6 years, 4 months ago

It's going "up" -- the raindrops act as convex mirrors/lenses making the image reverted.

Ahaan Rungta - 6 years, 4 months ago

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Yes, the convex mirrors cause such effect. And rain drops can be treated as convex lens.

Someone must think a problem on this :)

Soumo Mukherjee - 6 years, 4 months ago

I do not think it is photoshop it is a matter of physics

Muname Shahriar Marshal - 6 years, 4 months ago

It's a massive, very tedious photoshop hack. It takes a while to invert the image of the plane in each and every raindrop. But you have to admit, the effect is spectacular, no?

Michael Mendrin - 6 years, 4 months ago

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You really think it's hack? :)

Snehal Shekatkar - 6 years, 4 months ago

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What's your view @Snehal Shekatkar ? :o

Soumo Mukherjee - 6 years, 4 months ago

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@Soumo Mukherjee @Krishna Sharma posted a reply below. I must admire the photographer however.

Snehal Shekatkar - 6 years, 4 months ago

Wow! if its massive Photoshop... hats off to the person responsible

But the drops are all lying on a plane. Can't it be that since the aeroplane is really far way and all the drops are almost equidistant from it. They invert the image. I may be wrong. Just sharing what struck to my mind :)

Soumo Mukherjee - 6 years, 4 months ago

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It's a little mind bending how many different meanings a little word like "plane" can have in this context, but all the raindrops are on a windowPANE.

Michael Mendrin - 6 years, 4 months ago

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@Michael Mendrin Yes, I had to stop myself from giving this a title of "Inversion Plane" ...

Calvin Lin Staff - 6 years, 4 months ago

@Michael Mendrin sorry for that. I meant the window pane can be thought of a "plane surface". I used the word "aeroplane" for the flying plane. So since the drops are all lying on a windowpane which can be approximated to a" plane surface". Can't it happen that the raindrops behave as Plano convex lens and since the plane(the flying one :D) is far away, inverted images are formed. I thought so because if an object is far way from the convex lens, we get an inverted image.

Soumo Mukherjee - 6 years, 4 months ago

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@Soumo Mukherjee Yes, that's exactly it. If the camera was too close to the windowpane, you wouldn't get these nice sharp inverted images.

Michael Mendrin - 6 years, 4 months ago

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@Michael Mendrin Ok, just for the conversation to keep rollin....

the camera might have magnified it? can't that happen. Then there is this astronomical telescope, according to its mechanism (as per what I can make out by seeing the diagram) the eyepiece inverts the image again. What about that. if some how they just inverted only the window pane so that they don't have to invert all the individual 'raindrop-images' one can get the desired effect of the present picture, can this be a possible way to photoshop it?

I have my physics text book opened while talking to you... lol. I haven't read my chapters on optics yet...

Soumo Mukherjee - 6 years, 4 months ago

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@Soumo Mukherjee Technically speaking, the images in the raindrops aren't anywhere as sharp as you'd expect from optical equipment like cameras and telescopes, so we can approximate this shot using a "pinhole camera", i.e., consider only rays passing through a single point lens and projecting onto a film plane. This sort of analysis is called "paraxial optics", which disregards all the usual problems of optical aberrations. Having said all of this, it's not hard to see that there's not much what a pinhole camera can do to "invert only the window pane" while leaving the orientation of the airplane intact. In fact, with an ideal pinhole camera, the airplane would be just as sharp as it looks inside the raindrops.

If you intend to study optics, first consider how things look like to an ideal pinhole camera. And then after you've gotten the hang of it, study what happens if the camera has an aperture size, i..e, an area, not a point. A fuller understanding of optics requires understanding the wave properties of light.

Michael Mendrin - 6 years, 4 months ago

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@Michael Mendrin You must look the pic posted by Guiseppi Butel. The glass appears to be close to the camera when the shot was taken. The house is far away. Can we say it is similar to the pic Calvin posted???

Soumo Mukherjee - 6 years, 4 months ago

@Michael Mendrin What if the camera had focused only on the windowpane, the background would be blurred then. Then the plane would not be as sharp as expected.

If this was photoshoped then I don't think they did it in their original click. Now there are lots of free apps where we can see a bit of the effect that we can put on any photograph. I have used such apps to blur background objects even the original photo had all the object very much sharp.

Ok, apart from getting more into photoshop, I want to find out "what point may help us to conclude that this is fake" and " if it isn't fake how can we spot that it might be original". I may not find what I intend to chase. But I will learn something that way and then post a tricky problem in brilliant soon.

Till then... I would just keep staring at it often and admire it :)

Soumo Mukherjee - 6 years, 4 months ago

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@Soumo Mukherjee To answer your question about what evidence could show it's original: the location of the inverted airplanes in each drop is exactly in the opposite direction relative to the actual airplane, in line with what you would expect in a convex lense. Additionally, distorted raindrops contain distorted inversions as expected. If it was a fake, the person would likely have placed the inverted images in a central location within each drop, considering it would be extremely difficult to replicate the true effect.

Carlos Zevallos - 6 years, 4 months ago

I love the people commenting it's photoshopped and such. Keep the laughs coming! :D

Anyway, I guess the question has been answered already, so just scroll down. :D

Joeie Christian Santana - 6 years, 4 months ago

here raindrops on surface are behaving as convex mirrors and therefore reflecting an inverted image of plane.

Aekansh Somani - 6 years, 4 months ago

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You mean convex lenses, don't you?

Guiseppi Butel - 6 years, 4 months ago

Beacuse rain drop is act like a convex lense

Muhammad Waqas - 6 years, 4 months ago

Optics physics

عمر عبدالمنعم - 6 years, 4 months ago

For me, I'd like to compare the water droplets on the pane of glass to the human eye. When humans process the image of the plane in the background, the light rays cross so that the image that is reflected on the optic nerve is upside down. This seems like a similar case of the light rays crossing to produce the upside down image displayed in the water droplets.

Sierra Lyon - 6 years, 4 months ago

The droplets act as a covex lens and the plane being at a distance greater than the radius of curvature of the so formed lens, the image formed is real and inverted

Krish Saxena - 6 years, 4 months ago

Lens effect.

Mike Camus - 6 years, 4 months ago

Total internal reflection.

Talha Hasan Gooner - 6 years, 4 months ago

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m c kya be pagal hai kya

Rishav Kumar - 6 years, 4 months ago

Photo shop Hack !!!!!!!

Hasan Ali - 6 years, 4 months ago

Not.this is physics phenomena,reverse image is depends on focal length. type of lense produced(converge or diverge) and radiues of curvature of lense.

محمد فكرى - 6 years, 4 months ago

just because of water droplets ,since it is behaving as a convex lens

Rishav Kumar - 6 years, 4 months ago
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