If you can change your vision to thermal spectrum range, will you do it?

[Bill W]

The lighting for the underground garden at Cruachan Power Station is also pretty weird to see.

(Cruachan is a pump-storage hydro scheme buried inside a mountain in Scotland https://www.visitcruachan.co.uk )

[Jenny]

Thank you everyone, you made this thread much more interesting than I thought it would be!

[Bill W]

Here is a slightly different take on the original posting, what if your eyes used the visible spectrum like a thermal camera ?

Here is the well known image of the 18th green at St Andrews Old Course, but in 'red hot'.

Normal colour image converted to luminance/greyscale
Greyscale then converted to thermal palette

Bill

[angelortega]

for me i would like regular visible all the way across swir.  but  these two seem to need some type of active light.  now to get pass this problem, i would like some low percent  of mwir all the way lwir . so if the light go out it would act as a backup

[NiHaoMike]

Since this is all in the realm of science fiction, I think I would prefer the ability to see flickering of light well into the GHz (and be able to control it at will, so that cheap LED lights don't drive me crazy) and decode the information encoded into it. At the same time, some fast way to get information out (at the rate of up to a few Gbps) would be an even bigger game changer, although I'm not sure what form I would like that to be in - perhaps in the form of low level RF or magnetic fields from the chest area since that's a good place for wearable electronics?

though on the plus side every woman would look hot

You'll find some hotter than others. In particular, you'll have an easy time telling which of the skinny ladies diet excessively to maintain their figure and which ones have a high thermal dissipation.

[Ultrapurple]

... In particular, you'll have an easy time telling which of the skinny ladies diet excessively to maintain their figure and which ones have a high thermal dissipation.

That's an interesting assertion. I've never noticed that sort of thing, although I must admit I don't tend to hang around supermodels much. Care to expand on it? (I think perhaps in a new thread rather than hijacking this one).

[LaserSteve]

Dating would not be fun, ever seen a teenage girl's face in Longwave Thermal? Worse yet, UV ?

In longwave, one of the things that is interesting is a sometimes lack of symmetry in faces if your camera is sensitive enough.  It seems Collagen is not always uniformly distributed.
I used to give tours of a lab, to hundreds of school kids each summer,  and one of our toys was made by Raytheon...  Inevitably one young lady would turn and verbally blast some  other young lady over some IR facial feature in each group. Sometimes resulting in tears.  Yours truly started giving a gentle warning about not interpreting the images before gating the shutter open.

Hint: On a thermal grayscale your potential GF/Wife can sometimes look like a leopard.... In a few cases, something even worse...

Boys did not seem to have the pronounced gradients.

To a small extent, in the winter we could tell who was outside in the last 20 minutes, and athletes could be a little different in the images.

There is also an anecdotal story going around in the imaging community  about young ladies lighting up in the 30 Terahertz range when attracted to a boy.  Accidently found while using a pair of grad students as a test target.

Steve

[calel]

In particular, you'll have an easy time telling which of the skinny ladies diet excessively to maintain their figure and which ones have a high thermal dissipation.

wait so the "naturally hot" ones would be literally hotter than the ones on a diet? would regular low end-mid end cams (like Ex or Exx) be able to pick up the differences between varying basal metabolic rates?

Hint: On a thermal grayscale your potential GF/Wife can sometimes look like a leopard.... In a few cases, something even worse...

I imagine it's worse with gingers then (the real ones with the freckles)

[vk6zgo]

At Tate Modern last year one floor of the elevator lobby was illuminated with bright, essentially monochromatic light (sodium yellow I think) and it gave the very curious effect of black-and-white vision - one rapidly 'tuned out' the yellowness but of course there was no other colour.

Sainsbury's (a major UK supermarket chain) has a corporate identity based on an orange colour. Unfortunately this means that their name is invisible on posters illuminated by sodium lighting.

Back in 1971, when I spent some time in the UK, the road rules had just changed to "dipped beams" in metropolitan areas, instead of "parking lights" only, but motorists were taking a while to get used to this in Southampton, where people were a bit more "laid back" than the bigger cities.

I remember one day, nearly getting run over by a taxi on a crosswalk.
The dark blue vehicle virtually disappeared under the Sodium lamps, & with no headlights, was very hard to see.
He probably had the same problem with my clothes!

A few years later, back for a week, I dropped in for a visit at a fish 'n chip shop I used to frequent in the same city, (anybody from SOTON remember the "Golden Chippy", up the road from the railway station?).
Leaving my hired pink Ford Cortina in a car park, I strolled down, & talked to the owners for a while.

During this time, night fell, so when I came back to pick up the car, I couldn't initially find it------there was a yellow Cortina, though!

Luckily, the keys had the rego number written on the tag!

[cejoba]

A real experiment:

His first camera looks really good, wonder what model it is?

[ArsenioDev]

That's a Tau 2, looks to be a Vue submodel

[svgurus]

At Tate Modern last year one floor of the elevator lobby was illuminated with bright, essentially monochromatic light (sodium yellow I think) and it gave the very curious effect of black-and-white vision - one rapidly 'tuned out' the yellowness but of course there was no other colour.

Most likely, it was Olafur Elliason's "yellow corridor", attached pictures are from it in Moscow) this exhibition also showed Richard Mosse's "Grid(Moria)" video installation, made with his favorite military grade lwir/mwir toys. I laughed so hard when they called them "special military cameras" in description, without mentioning "thermal"

[svgurus]

That's a Tau 2, looks to be a Vue submodel

Its Flir vue pro, most likely 640 9mm model, the small-step cone surrounding germanuim lens and single digit in focal length number are quite distinctive) resolution is quite lousy, because video goes through analog output. the camera died most likely because of overvoltage - it has no overvoltage/reverse polarity protection when used without hdmi adapter like in attached picture. i didnt use such models but powering issues were one of things that kept me from buying them. or maybe prolonged overheating was the problem, it sits near his hot elbow and is surrounded by other gear
Back to original question - i wouldn't trade regular eyes for thermal vision, even after watching predator/riddick movies But i know a girl who saw my lwir photos from party we both attended and said she would like such a camera built in an eye if there was an opportunity) I decided not to disappoint her by telling that mine heats up to ~30 deg above ambient

[CatalinaWOW]

One of the most common uses of alternate viewing spectrum is the use of vertically polarized glasses for driving.  Those who have used these these know that they give dramatically reduced glare off of roadways, windshields and water.  And make it impossible to read LCD displays on gas pumps and other places, including the dash instruments on some vehicles. Any spectral band has advantages and drawbacks