I have done a lot of work with high resolution thermal imagers and never seen any images that look like these so I was curious what was going on.
>I also simultaneously shot a black-and-white photo with a regular camera and a wide-angle lens for comparison. I then wrote my own program to color the black-and-white photograph with the actual thermal data, using a false-color scale which you see in the upper-right corner of every image.
Amazing drawings, but these are not actually thermal images.
Pure thermal would have been quite smudged. IMHO the B&W adds really nice context - and it sounds like it's not just a straight overlay, but he's recoloring the B&W pixels, which I think provides a crisper result.
I'm curious what resolutions you've worked with, if you don't mind sharing. High frame rate thermal cameras (above 9hz) are ITAR restricted. Hi-res above 640x480 is not common on the consumer market and is restricted to embargoed countries. Cooled thermal cameras are restricted too IIRC.
ITAR restricts the export of arms technology from the United States, but the big names in traditional digital cameras are all Japanese. Perhaps naively, I would have thought they'd have the expertise needed to build a high-quality thermal camera without US involvement. I suppose infrared imaging must be quite a bit different from visible light.
The device we had was 1.3MP--rough the same resolution as the composite image discussed in this article. The camera core was expensive, but the lens actually cost more than the sensor. Yes it was ITAR regulated.
Thanks. Interesting link. I must admit I can’t help but admire Lockheed’s marketing with that whitehouse image. There’s a not-so-subtle message in there.
At my previous work I was involved with processing of data from 1024x800 cameras with 16 bit per pixel and nice optics. After proper calibration and trivial image processing they were not particularly blurry since they were able to resolve even tiny temperature differences.
By that metric, most of the NASA images you see are "drawings" as well. I worked on imaging systems for various NASA spacecraft, and most of the published images are false-color, albedo-adjusted, averaged mosaics of many imaging sources from different orbital passes over months or years. Images of people and everyday things are heavily-processed as well, using techniques like HDR and color correction. Photography has always involved this sort of technical manipulation.
OP here -- I added a top-level comment with some more links. In particular you can find the separate thermal and visible images on the repo: https://github.com/dheera/iceland-thermal
Thanks for the clarification! This makes sense, the reason your images look 'off' is that the normal thermal pallets (such as the one in your colorbar) are typically a roughly constant (or at least smoothly varying) luminance with the thermal information stored in the chroma. Your images have that multiplied by the visible light image intensity which gives a very surreal effect. Fun stuff
>I also simultaneously shot a black-and-white photo with a regular camera and a wide-angle lens for comparison. I then wrote my own program to color the black-and-white photograph with the actual thermal data, using a false-color scale which you see in the upper-right corner of every image.
Amazing drawings, but these are not actually thermal images.