Seeing the Light: Optics in Nature, Photography, Color, Vision, and Holography

Book Description

The most complete and lucid nonmathematical study of light available. Chapters are self-contained, making the book flexible and easy to read. Coverage includes such non-traditional topics as processes of vision and the eye, atmospherical optical phenomena, color perception and illusions, color in nature and in art, Kirilian photography, and holography. Includes experiments that can be carried out with simple equipment. Chapters contain optional advanced sections, and appendixes review the mathematics for quantitative aspects. Illustrated, including a four-color insert.

Customer Reviews:

Very good.......2005-09-09

The book arrived quickly and in the condition that was specified. No issues, would use this seller again.

Optometry was never ever so interesting.......2005-08-31

Particularly for a budding Optometrist, this book allows the Optometrist to be acquainted with all the fine arts of optics and the like.

Seeing the Light.......2002-10-29

Book arrived in great shape. Like new!!

most missed book.......2002-08-21

This is the best textbook I ever had, and I sold it for some ($$$) at the end of a semester to buy a bus ticket. Very mad; I miss the book, but it's so expensive. It's amazing the way the author incorporates all sorts of literary allusions in this physics book, such as offering an interesting hypothesis on the optical illusion of the egyptians getting swallowed by the red sea while chasing the jews. Every chapter, light becomes a metaphor for so many things, the way we see, the obstacles, etc.

Physics of light for everyone else.......2000-06-15

I first discovered this book when I asked a physics professor down the hall for an explanation of diffraction and refraction in relation to some daytime sky phenomenon. He handed me Seeing the Light, and before long I coveted the volume. The authors dress down optical physics into explanations that anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of physics can understand, relating optical phenomenon to everyday events and objects. The diagrams and photos help clarify the explanation. And practical, hands-on suggested activities help drive the point home. This book would be great for physics teachers -- or teachers at any level. How about pinhole cameras or illusion drawings for class projects?

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Theory of Remote Image Formation
Richard E. Blahut
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Fundamentals of Radar Signal Processing

ASIN: 0521553733

Book Description

Richard Blahut presents a unified analysis of the mathematical methods that underlie the various algorithms used in remote image formation. In many applications, images, such as ultrasonic or X-ray signals, are recorded and then analyzed with digital or optical processors in order to extract information. Such processing requires the development of algorithms of great precision and sophistication. Key features of the text include practical applications that illustrate theoretical concepts and many homework problems that enhance the learning of graduate students of electrical engineering and computer science, as well as professionals.

A Natural History of Vision (Bradford Books)

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finding your way around vision

A Natural History of Vision (Bradford Books)
Nicholas J. Wade
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Eye and Brain

ASIN: 0262231948

Amazon.com

Nicholas Wade takes a daring approach in this collection of documents from the history of optical studies. In it, he compiles a curiously structured anthology of writers, from the 5th-century B.C. Greek philosopher Democritus to the 19th-century English musical instrument maker Charles Wheatstone, including such famous students of light and vision as Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein. These thinkers are grouped by theme ("Light and the Eye," for example, or "Space") and by date, but only very loosely by immediate subject, giving the book a hop-around feel. Wade freely admits that the organization of the anthology requires work of the reader; it may indeed call for effort, but his collection is of signal usefulness to students of the history of science and the optical sciences. --Gregory McNamee

Book Description

This illustrated survey covers what Nicholas Wade calls the "observational era of vision," beginning with the Greek philosophers and ending with Wheatstone's description of the stereoscope at the end of the 1830s (after which vision became an experimental science). Although there are other histories of vision, this is the first to present extracts of the works of scholars, organized both topically and chronologically. In what has become the author's signature style, the book juxtaposes verbal and visual descriptions. Many of the over three hundred illustrations are derived from engravings--of portraits of the scholars cited, as well as of scientific diagrams.

Each portrait appears beside a significant quotation by the scholar, along with the dates of birth and death, and the source of the original illustration. The author's commentary provides the context for the quotations and traces the scientific development within each topic. The book is organized around the principal topics within the investigation of visual phenomena: light, color, subjective visual phenomena (such as afterimages and pattern distortions), motion, binocularity, space, and visual illusions.

Customer Reviews:

finding your way around vision.......2003-11-29

I'm a photographer who thinks about photography and its relationship to human vision. Wade's book is an inspiration for that kind of thinking. What is remarkable about this book is the way it reveals that understanding HOW we see did not come easily to humanity.

Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology

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Physics to Phenomenology
Psychology & Neurophysiology of Vision Science
I can't believe it's an one-author book
A book that's as good as its cover
A unique text for students and researchers alike.

Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology
Stephen E. Palmer
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0262161834

Book Description

This book revolutionizes how vision can be taught to undergraduate and graduate students in cognitive science, psychology, and optometry. It is the first comprehensive textbook on vision to reflect the integrated computational approach of modern research scientists. This new interdisciplinary approach, called "vision science," integrates psychological, computational, and neuroscientific perspectives.

The book covers all major topics related to vision, from early neural processing of image structure in the retina to high-level visual attention, memory, imagery, and awareness. The presentation throughout is theoretically sophisticated yet requires minimal knowledge of mathematics. There is also an extensive glossary, as well as appendices on psychophysical methods, connectionist modeling, and color technology. The book will serve not only as a comprehensive textbook on vision, but also as a valuable reference for researchers in cognitive science, psychology, neuroscience, computer science, optometry, and philosophy.

Customer Reviews:

Physics to Phenomenology.......2006-07-05

Palmer has written an outstanding book for the technically trained reader, even if that reader has a casual interest in understanding the emergence of of human cognition from the physics of vision, to the function of sight.
Absent from the book is a cogent presentation of aesthetics of seeing. For that the interested reader should see John Gage's Color and Meaning.

Psychology & Neurophysiology of Vision Science.......2004-06-11

Stephen Palmer has written a marvelous book. Its well organized and written. It is suitable as a reference & text for those beginning and advancing to higher levels in Vision Science. The pictures, diagrams, graphs, charts, photos, and outlines are well placed and explained in the body of the text. Because Dr. Palmer is first a Neuropsychologist, the approach is more geared toward psychological mechanisms & psychophysics. The emphasis is less on Biological Approaches to Visual Function. This & Chalupa's 2 Volume Set should get novice to intermediate scientists going further in Vision Science!

I can't believe it's an one-author book.......2003-01-04

This book covers neuro, behavioral, computer science, almost everything about vision science, and very organized. at the bottom line, this book can be a good reference for vision science.

A book that's as good as its cover.......2002-07-27

As an interested academic in a completely unrelated field (chemistry) Palmer's book was only the second cognitive psychology text that I had ever read. It was an "eye opener." There should be awards given to authors who commit themselves and succeed at the task of what Palmer has done here. The book was comprehensive and didn't pull any punches, but was still very readable. The quality of the writing and organization leads me to assume that the man is a gifted teacher as well. The layout, glossary, index, and organization of the text were clearly constructed with the reader in mind. Five star reviews at Amazon.com should be reserved for books of this quality.

A unique text for students and researchers alike........1999-05-14

This is an excellent book! Steve Palmer is perhaps best known for his work on perceptual grouping and perceptual organization. With this text, however, Palmer proves that his interests extend beyond these boundaries into the domain of perception as a whole. Palmer also demonstrates that his interests are not confined by one methodology either. Presenting findings from a number of perspectives is one of the things that excites Palmer the most, and he does it like no other. By making use of relevant research in neuroscience, psychology, computer vision and linguistics, to name a few, Palmer develops a unified text for the emerging domain of "Vision Science", a subfield of the larger interdisciplinary enterprise of Cognitive Science.

Palmer's book differs from other books on visual perception in three major ways. First, Palmer introduces the major theoretical perspectives to visual perception--inferential, ecological and computational-- early in the text and then places empirical findings throughout the text in the context of these perspectives. Second, Palmer presents findings from a number of disciplines in an integrated fashion. As opposed to having separate sections for neuroscience, computer vision and perceptual development, for example, Palmer presents research from multiple disciplines as it relates to relevant areas of visual perception, such as perceptual organization or object recognition. Third, and perhaps most importantly, Palmer resists the temptation to dichotomize. The discussions of the literature are sophisticated, presenting both the pros and the cons of different approaches to phenomena in perception, even venturing to propose novel theoretical syntheses at various points in the book.

Book Description

Images and video play a crucial role in visual information systems and multimedia. There is an extraordinary number of applications of such systems in entertainment, business, art, engineering, and science. Such applications often involved large image and video collections, and therefore, searching for images and video in large collections is becoming an important operation. Because of the size of such databases, efficiency is crucial. We strongly believe that image and video retrieval need an integrated approach from fields such as image processing, shape processing, perception, database indexing, visualization, and querying, etc.
This book contains a selection of results that was presented at the Dagstuhl Seminar on Content-Based Image and Video Retrieval, in December 1999. The purpose of this seminar was to bring together people from the various fields, in order to promote information exchange and interaction among researchers who are interested in various aspects of accessing the content of image and video data. The book provides an overview of the state of the art in content-based image and video retrieval. The topics covered by the chapters are integrated system aspects, as well as techniques from image processing, computer vision, multimedia, databases, graphics, signal processing, and information theory.
The book will be of interest to researchers and professionals in the fields of multimedia, visual information (database) systems, computer vision, and information retrieval.

Average customer rating:

Pass Optometry Boards with this text.

Visual Perception
Steven H. Schwartz
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill Medical
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0071411879

Book Description

The only text for the optometric optics course in optometry schools! This concise, student-friendly, highly visual text covers the key topics in geometrical and visual optics foundational to optometric practice. Features over 300 illustrations, summaries and self-assessment questions, and case studies making the subject more clinically relevant. In addition, the illustrations will be improved with more original artwork.

Customer Reviews:

Pass Optometry Boards with this text........1999-12-04

Kudos to Dr. Schwartz for writing such a swell text. This book takes complicated subjects and condenses them into an easy afternoon read. If you read this book before taking Part I of NBEO, you'll greatly increase your chances of passing. The text essentially summarizes a significant number of concepts NBEO writes questions about. Thanks Doc Schwartz!

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Motion-Free Super-Resolution
Subhasis Chaudhuri , and Joshi Manjunath
Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0387258906

Book Description

Motion-Free Super-Resolution is a compilation of very recent work on various methods of generating super-resolution (SR) images from a set of low-resolution images. The current literature on this topic deals primarily with the use of motion cues for the purpose of generating SR images. These cues have, it is shown, their advantages and disadvantages. In contrast, this book shows that cues other than motion can also be used for the same purpose, and addresses both the merits and demerits of these new techniques.

Motion-Free Super-Resolution supersedes much of the lead author’s previous edited volume, "Super-Resolution Imaging," and includes an up-to-date account of the latest research efforts in this fast-moving field. This sequel also features a style of presentation closer to that of a textbook, with an emphasis on teaching and explanation rather than scholarly presentation.

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Vision and Photography
Outstanding
Shows you how you see and how you paint
Fascinating Science of Visual Art
Worth a Look

Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing
Margaret S. Livingstone
Manufacturer: Harry N. Abrams
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0810904063

Amazon.com

What is it that makes the work of Monet, van Gogh, da Vinci, and Warhol so visually arresting? How do our eyes and brains coordinate to perceive line and color?

Neurobiologist Margaret Livingstone addresses these and many other questions in Vision and Art, a lively look at the science underlying art. She writes accessibly, but with plenty of technical depth, on such matters as the nature of light and the visible spectrum, the organization of visual-image processing, the structure of the vertebrate eye and brain, and individual and culturally conditioned perceptions of color. Using well-known works of art as case studies, she offers fascinating bits of trivia (on, for instance, how pastels are made and why purple dyes are so rare) alongside practical information for artists (for example, how high-contrast contours and evenly distributed luminance attract the eye).

The result is a literate, lucid blend of art and science that will appeal to artists and connoisseurs alike. --Gregory McNamee

Customer Reviews:

Vision and Photography.......2005-10-17

This is a book that every teacher of photography and serious photographer should read and study and re-read. Although the book contains no photographic examples, there are plenty of examples in famous paintings to support the visual research Dr. Livingtson so clearly writes about. The examples in paintings are easily transferable
to a number of familiar and famous photographs.
Ever wonder what Ansel Adams and Edward Weston were so successful with the black-and-white photographs but not with their color photographs? I have, and her book has provided me with insights into this and other photographic practices.

Outstanding.......2005-03-16

After reading it, you'll want to keep it close to you. That way, you'll never forget how important art and science are in your life.

Shows you how you see and how you paint.......2004-01-17

Margaret Livingstone has produced a book so very useful to visual artists that it may, in its density of ideas, seem definitive rather than evocative. But evocative it is. As we learn from studying it, Livingstone's book offers implications that may be developed by any artist who reads it in almost any direction. One might take as an example the very rich Chapter 8, with its notions of luminance as a balance for the salience, or pushiness of certain colors - how Leonardo handled it, how Ingres handled it, and how today's painter or digital image maker might go even further. The size and shape of the book allow for illustrations that work on the eye at the right scale. And there is an overall visual loudness to the book that is jarring and satisfying.

The author gets to the structure of our visual systems, makes them very clear, and tells us things that are lasting and verifiable. Her spirit of personal experimentation shows in the book, and makes us think that looking inquisitively at the world will pay off.

Fascinating Science of Visual Art.......2003-06-09

Some teasers on the back cover:

"Why do Claude Monet's fields of flowers seem to wave in the breeze?"

"What is the secret of Mona Lisa's smile?"

The first two chapters cover some scientific fundamentals- how light and the human vision works. While this is all very scientific, every effort is made to make it understandable, with plenty of full-color diagrams illustrating the concepts. While these 2 chapters are not the easiest to read, they're not rocket science either, and provide a valuable foundation for the rest of the book. Not essential but VERY useful.

Things start to get interesting toward the end of the 2nd chapter, when we start to understand what a red/green colorblind person sees. But the best stuff starts to come in the third chapter ("Luminance and Night Vision"). Plenty of interesting illustrations are provided in this chapter (like red cherries in a blue bowl, where the cherries appear brighter or darker than the bowl depending on the ambient light, or flickering polkadots), and continues until the rest of a book, making it a truly fascinating read.

Oh, and the explanation on Mona Lisa's enigmatic smile is very convincing.

I definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in both visual art and science.
I also recommend it to anyone who's interested in science and how things work- you'll appreciate some art pieces a lot more after reading this book.

Worth a Look.......2003-01-30

This volume is very good at covering how the human visual system operates and how that affects the artist and art viewer. It's not too dense with abstruse scientific detail and it contains lots of good examples and demonstrations. The writing style and
organisation of the book are also clear.

Book Description

The Neurology of Vision sets out the principles and information needed to understand and manage disorders of the visual pathways in the brain. The author divides vision into three components. The optical component addresses the eye's ability to properly focus light on the retina. The retinocortical component converts light into neural signals in the retina, transmitting them to the primary visual cortex. Finally, the integrative component converts this simple visual information into more complicated forms. The symptoms and signs, testing methods, and diseases of each part of the visual system are presented using this unique, structural component approach. A final chapter discusses the visual manifestations of psychiatric disturbances. The book is heavily illustrated with over 150 beautifully rendered line illustrations, 50 radiographic brain images, and 60 retinal photographs. Case studies with teaching questions are also included, to further the reader's knowledge and test understanding.

Adaptive Optics for Vision Science: Principles, Practices, Design and Applications (Wiley Series in Microwave and Optical Engineering)

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Adaptive Optics for Vision Science: Principles, Practices, Design and Applications (Wiley Series in Microwave and Optical Engineering)
Jason Porter , Hope Queener , Julianna Lin , Karen Thorn , and Abdul A. S. Awwal
Manufacturer: Wiley-Interscience
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0471679410

Book Description

Leading experts present the latest technology and applications in adaptive optics for vision science

Featuring contributions from the foremost researchers in the field, Adaptive Optics for Vision Science is the first book devoted entirely to providing the fundamentals of adaptive optics along with its practical applications in vision science. The material for this book stems from collaborations fostered by the Center for Adaptive Optics, a consortium of more than thirty universities, government laboratories, and corporations.

Although the book is written primarily for researchers in vision science and ophthalmology, the field of adaptive optics has strong roots in astronomy. Researchers in both fields share this technology and, for this reason, the book includes chapters by both astronomers and vision scientists.

Following the introduction, chapters are divided into the following sections:
* Wavefront Measurement and Correction
* Retinal Imaging Applications
* Vision Correction Applications
* Design Examples

Readers will discover the remarkable proliferation of new applications of wavefront-related technologies developed for the human eye. For example, the book explores how wavefront sensors offer the promise of a new generation of vision correction methods that can deal with higher order aberrations beyond defocus and astigmatism, and how adaptive optics can produce images of the living retina with unprecedented resolution.

An appendix includes the Optical Society of America's Standards for Reporting Optical Aberrations. A glossary of terms and a symbol table are also included.

Adaptive Optics for Vision Science arms engineers, scientists, clinicians, and students with the basic concepts, engineering tools, and techniques needed to master adaptive optics applications in vision science and ophthalmology. Moreover, readers will discover the latest thinking and findings from the leading innovators in the field.

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