Trippy shots of Asian cities with a fractal lens

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Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/08/14/trippy-shots-of-asian-cities-w.html

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This is consistent with my fuzzy memories of my last trip to Tokyo.

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Am I correct in my understanding that these are actually prismatic lenses from a company called Fractals? As opposed to…? I don’t know, really. What would a fractal lens be anyway?

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A lens that lets you take pictures that each time it is magnified, shows new photos resembling the original ??

now seriously, I wanted to see this lens …

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Enhance! … same picture results

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image

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The less over-the-top ones remind me of a lensbaby.

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You_keep_using_that_word

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I think I visited the manufacturer’s website and found the lens looks like a brass knuckles with a kaleidoscope glued in it.

Taking as an example the photos of the product I saw on this site, it seems strange to use it in front of the original lens. But the photos made with This gadget look cool.

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Blurry? Clouds are fractal, and composed of small “lenses”…

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I think there is value in using a word to describe something in a descriptive, but not always literal, sense.

For instance, these photographs.

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I agree with you there. But these photographs do not look at all fractal, nor do the filters themselves. Fractal does not mean “lots of copies”. It means things like “has a fractional number of dimensions”, “recursive”, “repeats at a smaller scale”.

I know that language is malleable, but when words with a well-defined set of meanings start to blend out into related but incorrect contexts, I think we end up poorer for it.

…or occasionally very amused. A few days ago, I saw a stack of bananas with a sign over them “Organic Bananas”. Nearby, there was a larger, cheaper stack with the sign “Inorganic Bananas”. I think I got nerd-sniped, but maybe it was in earnest.

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Ha, no. They do.

Ok:

  • simile
  • metaphor

Both are components of figurative language.

Better?

Eh, I tried.

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I saw “fractal lens” and my brain thought it was “Fresnel lens”, and I wondered how one of those could produce images like that.

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Summing up:

  • the company that makes/sells them calls them Fractal Filters…
  • … but their website clarifies that they are prism filters
  • you can hold them in your hand!
  • the mounting looks like the filter can double as a knuckleduster
  • set of three for USD 99

Why isn’t this at the Boing Boing Store already?

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You can always make your own:

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