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Offline Bobby Shafto

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #180 on: May 16, 2018, 02:04:35 PM »
From yesterday evening.

Offline hexagon

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #181 on: May 16, 2018, 02:10:53 PM »
Regarding possible errors. You have to make sure that the distance between the aligned water levels compared to the horizon is significantly larger than the distance between the aligned water levels and the center of the picture. Than everything is fine. All other arguments regarding errors and alignment you can just ignore. It's just distraction from the real question.   

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Offline Bobby Shafto

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #182 on: May 16, 2018, 02:11:53 PM »
What do you know? The perspective lines converge on the same plane as the water levels.

Offline Tontogary

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #183 on: May 16, 2018, 02:32:47 PM »
That looks pretty good to me!

Well done for persevering with this.

Can i ask what height you were at? And i can also make out an island to the right of the picture, what is the island, and how far away is it?

There seems to be a reasonable horizon, and i would suggest it is the actual horizon.

Also, if you haven't heard of bronies before, that reflects poorly on your understanding of the world that surrounds you. It's practically impossible not to know about them.

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Offline Bobby Shafto

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #184 on: May 16, 2018, 04:48:54 PM »
Can i ask what height you were at? And i can also make out an island to the right of the picture, what is the island, and how far away is it?
View from Mt. Soledad in La Jolla. My vantage spot was around 790' elevation, based on topo map.

That isn't an island. It's part of the coastline looking: Oceanside to San Clemente. Maybe as far as Dana Point, but I think visual limit due to conditions was around 40-50 miles. The Coronado Islands off of Baja Mexico were visible. I could not see San Clemente Island until barely picking it out when backlit by the setting sun. And that's 60 miles away and visible on a clear day; the kind which SoCal might not get until September.

I still don't know at what point we can declare the apparent horizon "true." I can guarantee that achieving perfect surface-level visibility will not gain the kind of rise needed to bring the apparent horizon in that picture up to the eye-level line. If it could, then I'd be able to see a horizon beyond and above San Clemente on a clear day. Never have.

(Never seen the shoreline of San Clemente either. Only the tops of its hills. Maybe by September, I'll have picked up a telescope...perhaps not one as powerful as Tom used to see across Monterey Bay...and I'll try to spot San Clemente and Catalina, and see if their shorelines can be magnified into view or a horizon line above and behind them. Because if that's where the "true" horizon is, it's never been seen.

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Offline Bobby Shafto

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #185 on: May 16, 2018, 05:24:37 PM »
Quote from: Tom Bishop
Quote
The distance from the top of the picture to the string is 419 pixels and the distance from the bottom of the picture to the string is 485 pixels. This means the center of camera lens is below at the level of the water, looking up at it.

This suggested that the camera was looking up at the device and everything was not perfectly leveled.
It suggests the camera had a forward pitch.



I made no effort whatsoever to level the camera's focal plane to horizontal because that doesn't affect the phenomenon which is under investigation. I adjusted pitch to best frame the picture.

But I made every effort to make sure that the camera lens was at the same level as the water.  Once done, so what if the camera has a tilt? The fact that the resulting 1600x900 resolution picture wasn't perfectly split by the water level at 450px in the vertical doesn't mean that the camera was not at the same level as the water.

I could apply roll, pitch and yaw to the camera and it wouldn't change the geometry. It would only change the framing (and some optical parameters, like focus and white balance, depending on what dominated the field of view).



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Offline AATW

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #186 on: May 16, 2018, 06:23:34 PM »
From yesterday evening.

That is great work. Well done.
And this is what I was trying to explain to Tom earlier.

If 3 jelly beans are in a line on the (flat) ground and the third of those is at the horizon then if your eye is at ground level you would expect the three beans to line up.
If you raise the first two beans to an altitude and leave the third one on the ground at the horizon then they can't possibly still be in a straight line, it has to be a triangle, so if you look across the first two beans - assuming they are the same altitude as each other - then the 3rd would obviously appear below that level.

The two water filled tubes are the first two jelly beans. They must be level with each other and thus at the same altitude because water will be level and the camera must be level with that because you can see the water level lines up in the picture. The third jelly bean is at the horizon and as Tom's thought experiment predicts is below the level of the first two. Simple geometry proves that must be the case, that picture is experimental evidence of it.
« Last Edit: May 16, 2018, 06:26:16 PM by AllAroundTheWorld »
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Offline Bobby Shafto

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #187 on: May 16, 2018, 07:25:15 PM »
I apologize since I'm not paying close attention to the Bedford Level and Wallace retest debate. I'm not sure if y'all are discussing the same point as the "horizon always at eye-level" claim.

But, here are some later observations from that same position. The only difference is I rotated counter-clockwise to point toward the expected azimuth of the setting sun.

Here's the oblique view, again with the camera at the height of the water but offset to the left of the cube to line up the tubes, with same results:



And with my perspective lines drawn in to verify "eye level" marries up with the water level line:



When I raised the camera level to get the level line to rest on the apparent horizon, the water levels in the tubes no longer align:



Come back down a bit to get the water levels back together and the horizon is below the level line again.



Moving the camera to a frontal view through the cube, maintain level with the water:



Eye level confirmed with perspective lines:



Sun is overexposed, making cube/water levels under exposed, but sun is affirming the horizon line, and it's not level with the eye:



Sun is now being eclipsed by the horizon (or whatever it is FE says is the reason for the appearance of a setting sun on the horizon):



But if that level line (level with the water and upon which the perspective lines of the leveled cube intersect) is "eye level" it is above the horizon. Thus, the horizon cannot always at "eye level" because it's obviously not here. If the horizon IS what is level to the eye, then there's got to be something wrong, either with:
1. the water level and the cube must be pitched backward somehow, or;
2. the horizon is higher than the setting sun

There's no indication that the cube is not level. Not the plumb bob. Not the torpedo level. Even if it wasn't straight and level, how can the water level be fooled?  Even if I'm not precisely lining up the levels, the smidgen up or down that it could be in error won't bring the level line to the apparent horizon, outlined by the sun.
« Last Edit: May 16, 2018, 07:31:23 PM by Bobby Shafto »

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Offline Bobby Shafto

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #188 on: May 16, 2018, 07:41:01 PM »
And a last check against the lines of perspective:




Oh, and there's San Clemente Island, I think, now silhouetted by the setting sun's glow, 65+ miles away. I'll have to double-check the azimuth. If it's Catalina, that's even further, but I doubt it.



Nope. Not San Clemente Island. It *IS* Catalina.
« Last Edit: May 16, 2018, 08:04:45 PM by Bobby Shafto »

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Offline Tom Bishop

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #189 on: May 16, 2018, 09:00:03 PM »

(click to enlarge)

Take a close look at this one. We can see that this is an example that it is clearly possible for the horizon to line up with the string depending on slight positioning.

The water levels in the water device are not lined up in this image, it is asserted; but again, the camera is not aligned with the "jellybean points" in the scene. The top half to the string is 434 pixels and the bottom half to the string is 571 pixels. The camera is not exactly centered.

In most of these pictures the camera is always from below. What happens when the camera is from below and you are looking at an points above you in the foregound, even slightly? Your straight line of sight with the foreground points that recedes into the distance beyond is pointing upwards into the air! It is not pointing level.

Recall the jellybean analogy, where jellybeans at your feet stretch into the horizon. Your eye needs to be looking at the jellybeans in the exact center line of the jellybeans to see whether they line up. You can't be slightly above or below the line of jellybeans.
« Last Edit: May 16, 2018, 09:17:13 PM by Tom Bishop »

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Offline Tumeni

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #190 on: May 16, 2018, 09:17:05 PM »

(click to enlarge)

Take a close look at this one. We can see that this is an example that it is clearly possible for the horizon to line up with the string depending on slight positioning.

The water levels in the water device are not lined up, it is alleged; but again, the camera is not aligned with the "jellybean points" in the scene. The top half is 434 pixels and the bottom half is 571 pixels. The camera is not exactly centered.

In most of these pictures the camera is always from below. What happens when the camera is from below and you are looking at an points above you in the foregound, even slightly? Your straight line of sight with the foreground points that recedes into the distance beyond is pointing upwards into the air! It is not pointing level.

Recall the jellybean analogy. You need to be looking at the jellybeans in the same center line of the jellybeans. You can't be slightly above or below the line of jellybeans which stretch into the horizon.

So the one picure you take issue with is the one where the operator deliberately moved the camera away from being level with the water? Did you miss this, above the picture?

"When I raised the camera level to get the level line to rest on the apparent horizon, the water levels in the tubes no longer align:"
=============================
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Nearly all flat earthers agree the earth is not a globe.

Nearly?

Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #191 on: May 16, 2018, 09:17:40 PM »
-snip-

Take a close look at this one. We can see that this is an example that it is clearly possible for the horizon to line up with the string depending on slight positioning.

The water levels in the water device are not lined up, it is alleged; but again, the camera is not aligned with the "jellybean points" in the scene. The top half is 434 pixels and the bottom half is 571 pixels. The camera is not exactly centered.

In most of these pictures the camera is always from below. What happens when the camera is from below and you are looking at an points above you in the foregound? Your line of sight with the foreground points and into the distance beyond is pointing upwards into the air! It is not pointing level.

Recall the jellybean analogy. You need to be looking at the jellybeans in the same center line of the jellybeans. You can't be slightly above or below the line of jellybeans which stretch into the horizon.
The camera was not leveled; it could have had a slight angle of attack.

BRB taking pics to prove my point
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Offline Bobby Shafto

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #192 on: May 16, 2018, 09:19:17 PM »

(click to enlarge)

Again, the camera is not centered. The top half of the image to the string is 524 pixels. The bottom half of the image to the string is 536 pixels.

The camera is level with the water. You're counting pixels from top to bottom, but that's not calculating level.

"Centering" as you seem to want to have it would mean making sure the camera is not only level in height with the water level but also set with focal point perpendicular to plumb. That way, a photo taken with resolution of 900px in the vertical will be perfectly split by the level line.

That's nice and all, but it's not necessary. I can point the angle downward to get more sea and less sky. Or point it up to get more sky and less sea. But that won't change the height of the camera relative to the water level, and the level line won't move up or down. The level line will move if I raise or lower the height of the camera or raise or lower the water level, or raise or lower the cube holding the water tubes.

I think I could even pitch the cube forward and backward without changing the water level line height, as long as it is pivoting on a centered axis (which it probably won't).

But this insistence that the photo show a vertically centered water line is mistaken.   

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Offline Tom Bishop

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #193 on: May 16, 2018, 09:20:00 PM »

(click to enlarge)

Take a close look at this one. We can see that this is an example that it is clearly possible for the horizon to line up with the string depending on slight positioning.

The water levels in the water device are not lined up, it is alleged; but again, the camera is not aligned with the "jellybean points" in the scene. The top half is 434 pixels and the bottom half is 571 pixels. The camera is not exactly centered.

In most of these pictures the camera is always from below. What happens when the camera is from below and you are looking at an points above you in the foregound, even slightly? Your straight line of sight with the foreground points that recedes into the distance beyond is pointing upwards into the air! It is not pointing level.

Recall the jellybean analogy. You need to be looking at the jellybeans in the same center line of the jellybeans. You can't be slightly above or below the line of jellybeans which stretch into the horizon.

So the one picure you take issue with is the one where the operator deliberately moved the camera away from being level with the water? Did you miss this, above the picture?

"When I raised the camera level to get the level line to rest on the apparent horizon, the water levels in the tubes no longer align:"

This one picture shows that slight positioning can allow the string to rest on the horizon. This is not a slam dunk.

The center of the camera lens is sitting vertically from below, looking upwards at the water levels in the water device in this image. The top half of the image to the string is 434 pixels and the bottom half of the image to the string is 571 pixels. It is not centered.

In the jellybean analogy of jellybeans stretching into the horizon, your eye needs to be centered with the jellybeans to line them all up. Your eye can't be slightly above or below.

"Centering" as you seem to want to have it would mean making sure the camera is not only level in height with the water level but also set with focal point perpendicular to plumb. That way, a photo taken with resolution of 900px in the vertical will be perfectly split by the level line.

That's nice and all, but it's not necessary. I can point the angle downward to get more sea and less sky. Or point it up to get more sky and less sea. But that won't change the height of the camera relative to the water level, and the level line won't move up or down. The level line will move if I raise or lower the height of the camera or raise or lower the water level, or raise or lower the cube holding the water tubes.

I think I could even pitch the cube forward and backward without changing the water level line height, as long as it is pivoting on a centered axis (which it probably won't).

But this insistence that the photo show a vertically centered water line is mistaken.

Of course it needs to be vertically centered. The center of the lens needs to be at the same altitude of the water levels in the water device. Otherwise you are looking slightly upwards or downwards at it. A very small angle misalignment with the line of sight of bodies in the foreground creates a very large angle numerous miles away.
« Last Edit: May 16, 2018, 09:27:06 PM by Tom Bishop »

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Offline AATW

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #194 on: May 16, 2018, 09:30:01 PM »
Take a close look at this one. We can see that this is an example that it is clearly possible for the horizon to line up with the string depending on slight positioning.
Of course it is. The horizon is a line, the string is a line. Of course you can place the camera so those two things line up.
That's what has been done.

Quote
The water levels in the water device are not lined up, it is alleged
It's not really an allegation, you can clearly see from the image that they aren't. And that is the point. The only way to line up the string with the horizon, because the horizon is below eye level, is for the camera to be angles slightly downward. And that is why the two water levels are now different.

In the rest of the photos the two water levels are the same, that proves the camera is lined up properly and looking straight ahead. I can't work out how you figure it's pointing upwards.
The horizon is quite clearly below the level of the water, so not at eye level.

What I find interesting is that would be true on a flat earth, so why are you arguing against it?
I know you like the idea of a debating club and all, people arguing from a position they don't actually hold. Maybe that's what you're doing here.
But there has to be some spirit of honesty too and just denying clear proof like this isn't honest debate.
Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"

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Offline Bobby Shafto

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #195 on: May 16, 2018, 09:30:16 PM »
So the one picure you take issue with is the one where the operator deliberately moved the camera away from being level with the water? Did you miss this, above the picture?

"When I raised the camera level to get the level line to rest on the apparent horizon, the water levels in the tubes no longer align:"
I didn't notice he'd done this, but you are exactly right.

It's not the pitch of the camera that causes that unleveling. It's the height.

It's not "centering." There's point in trying to capture the level sighting at the precise center of the framed picture. I could exaggerate it so that level was shown near the extreme top of the image. Or at the extreme bottom. I could even tilt the camera. All that is no different from cropping a picture after having taken it. It's a framing issue. It's not influence the measurement.

It's the camera's height that's key.

Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #196 on: May 16, 2018, 09:39:39 PM »
BRB taking pics to prove my point
Alright Tom, let's put this jelly bean thing to rest once and for all.

I lined up a few lego figures on my table like this:



As you can see, they are in a (mostly) straight line. Thus if I align the camera on that line, they will be superimposed like so:



Thing is, the figure in front isn't necessarily centered. I took a second one with a lower angle of attack where it's also superimposed. I also could have cropped the one above to make the top lower.

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Offline MCToon

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #197 on: May 16, 2018, 09:43:40 PM »
It seems that Tom Bishop has just one remaining exception with this experiment: the camera is not vertically centered.

Tom, if the camera is vertically centered and you can count the same number of pixels above and below the line would you accept this as a valid experiment and acknowledge the results?
I love this site, it's a fantastic collection of evidence of a spherical earth:
Flight times
Full moon
Horizon eye level drops
Sinking ship effect

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Offline Tumeni

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #198 on: May 16, 2018, 09:48:53 PM »
The center of the lens needs to be at the same altitude of the water levels in the water device. Otherwise you are looking slightly upwards or downwards at it.

And it IS "at the same altitude of the water levels in the water device" in all the photos, EXCEPT the one you singled out, where the operator DELIBERATELY moved it away from centred to demonstrate what 'wrong' looks like. 
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Offline Bobby Shafto

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #199 on: May 16, 2018, 09:55:28 PM »
Of course it needs to be vertically centered. The center of the lens needs to be at the same altitude of the water levels in the water device. Otherwise you are looking slightly upwards or downwards at it. A very small angle misalignment with the line of sight of bodies in the foreground creates a very large angle numerous miles away.
No.

This seems so simple to me. I don't know how to explain it to you.

The camera has a field of view. Okay? Changing the pointing angle won't change the height or the angle between the camera lens and the water level. Height and angle remain the same. The angle of incidence of the ray from water level to the lens changes. Yes. But that won't alter the geometry. If it alters anything, it'll alter the optics, like distortion or clarity or focus, but none of that will have any bearing on what we're after here, particularly at the minute incident angles involved.

And before you start saying it does, if you were inclined, that's a separate issue from what you are saying, about changing the viewing angle or relative heights. That's a flat "no," and unless you can comprehend this basic point, I don't know how we can even have a discussion or analysis about the rest of the test.

Here's what I do. I set up the apparatus first. I spend most of my time on that, and only because I'm trying to get it square and level for the purposes of the perspective element of the demo. If I didn't care about that, I could just throw it on the mount and not worry about level. The water will level itself. But I won't be able to use the lines of perspective of the cube. The cube will no longer matter.

But because I want it to, I level the whole rig left/right, forward/backward. And it's an ordeal, especially when there is wind buffeting. I can't use the plumb bob in the wind, and the plumb bob is proven to me to be the most sensitive to departure from level. But I still use the spirit level and the bubble level on the tripod used to hold the rig.

As for the water levels in the tube? I don't care if they're filled so that they are exactly center on the cube. For convenience, I make sure they're filled so that they fall somewhere between the middle space. Because that's the range of freedom of have with my horizontal guide line. If I'm not going to bother sighting through the cube, I don't even need that. I'll just line the tubes up. But the sight line allows me to move the camera off angle from the tubes yet maintain level with the tubes.

I make sure the guide line is level by, after aligning it with the water level miniscus (love that word) on one end, measuring the height of each end to 1/64th of an inch. I also eyeball it and if it doesn't look right, I'll double and triple check until not only does every level match but my eye agrees.  I work my way around, checking it along each side of the cube.

Once that's all done, I measure out 3 feet from below the cube tripod and set up the camera tripod. I get it roughly at the same height, mount the camera, and then start finding the actual level height. I zoom in on the water level and try to match up with the guideline. I pan across the guideline. I tilt up and down. I zoom out, zoom in, fine tuning the height of the camera on the tripod. Once I feel good about the height of the camera, I lock it in. Now, the camera is level with the water, as long as I don't bump or move the tripod.

But I can still pan, tilt, zoom...and none of that will change the level height relationship.

If I have to move the camera in the tranverse, like line up with the tubes or line up so that I can shoot through the cube, I have to check level height again and adjust if necessary. But once I have it level, I can pan/tilt/zoom and it doesn't effect the level relationship.

I choose to frame the picture using pan/tilt/zoom depending on the aesthetic or the point I want to focus in on. But there's no requirement that I lock the camera in at all degrees of freedom just to try to get an image with the same amount of space above and below the level line. That's ridiculous.

If there's some ocular reason why a miniscule degree of angle of incidence to the lens centerpoint is critical for this kind of test, at this kind of focal length such that the light from the water tube alignment needs to be entering the lens and hitting the camera sensor at precisely 90°, I have no idea why that would matter. It's a false fear that any distortion from that kind of off-axis viewing through the lens would cause the level lines to be untrue.

You're not even saying that. At least not yet. You're just confusing what impact certain degrees of freedom of the camera will have on the observation. If need be, I will take images of the same setup with only the camera pitch changing. And I'll show you have the water level alignment will not change, whether I'm pointing the camera down from level or up from level. As long as I'm not changing height of the camera, all that's doing is changing the field of view.
« Last Edit: May 16, 2018, 10:01:42 PM by Bobby Shafto »