Wesley's Tool-Box

I had a chance to ride the Han-gang river cruise tonight. This is perhaps only the second time to ride on one, despite basically living in the vicinity of Seoul for nearly 15 years and seeing the big river very often.

The last time, I rode the ship during the day, so this was the first time I was able to see the riverside and bridges at night. Lots of lighting fixtures were installed on the bridges during the past decade, and they are quite a sight to see. Read on to see the photos of the bridges I took with iPhone 5S.

Like it was back in June for Saturn,it would be a good time to get photos of Jupiter for the next couple of months. Earth is getting closer to it, meaning bigger angular diameter (about 41.9" now, and will peak at 46.8" in early January), and it rises high up in the sky during the night, lowering distortion from atmospheric disturbance.

With nature cooperating, I tried various combinations of ISO and shutter speed settings on my Canon SX50 HS to capture distinct cloud bands of Jupiter. Today's sweet spot seemed to be at 1/125s with ISO 80 setting. Too bright or dark, and the bands became hard to tell apart. At the optimal setting, the thickening of the lower band was noticeable, and that's where the Great Red Spot (GRS) was.


And this is a composition of that optimal Jupiter photo over the Galilean satellites I took a few minutes later. The satellites are Ganymede, Europa, Io, and Callisto from left to right. Jovian system was at about 44.8 degrees above horizon and climbing the eastern sky, so it was vertically arranged. The photo was rotated clockwise by 90 degrees to show the system horizontally. Read further for specific settings I used.

2012 was a rare year where I was able to photograph two instances of celestrial bodies blocking the Sun. It's also the year I left this blog without updates, so I skipped on sharing what I caught, at this place. I'm going to rectify this problem with this post.

After I uploaded the composite photo of the partial solar eclipse yesterday, I remembered that I also made an animated GIF version of it. The left one is this. If you click the thumbnail, you'll be able to see the 24 photos in succession.

The right one is the Venus making a transit of the Sun, which is quite rare - the next one will happen in 2117. I was in Madison, Wisconsin at the time, and was able to catch the event as the Sun was setting into the western sky. It was very cloudy that day, but I was able to make do and catch enough photos to make an animated version out of it. Click the thumbnail to see it in full glory.

- Partial solar eclipse
Camera: Canon EOS 450D + Tamron 18-270mm Di II VC PZD
Time: 2012-05-21 06:51 - 08:46 KST (UT+9)
Composition: 24 frames, 5-minute interval
Location: Seoul, Korea

- Transit of Venus
Camera: Canon EOS 450D + Tamron 18-270mm Di II VC PZD
Time: 2012-06-05 18:35 - 20:23 CDT (UT-5)
Composition: 12 frames, 10-minute interval
Location: Madison, Wisconsin, USA

Yesterday, there was a rare "hybrid" (annular/total) solar eclipse that were visible in parts of Africa and Americas. Unfortunately, it was in the middle of the night in Korea, so I couldn't personally see it. Next solar eclipse that I can see without leaving the country would be in 2016.

So I'm looking back at the solar eclipse that I did see and photograph last year on the roof of the company office. The 24 photographs of the Sun, starting from the lower left (because it was rising) were taken at a 5-minute interval and then put into one image. The eclipse started as the Sun rose over the horizon, and finished just before the work hours. Talk about work-friendly celestrial event.

Camera: Canon EOS 450D
Time: 2012-05-21 06:51 - 08:46 KST
Location: Seoul, Korea

If you buy a phone with camera function in Korea, you'll notice that taking a photo will produce a shutter sound even if you set the phone to vibrate or silent mode. This is because of a government recommendation set in 2004 to have phones always make a sound louder than 65dB when a photo is taken, to curb spy shots and boost privacy.

iPhones are no exception, and if you buy one in Korea, the silent mode switch does nothing to, uh, silence the shutter sound. This is interesting because iPhones are generally not differentiated except for slight variation in CDMA or LTE support.

(ADDENDUM: The situation seems to be the same for the iPhones bought in Japan or the Philippines.)

The question, then, would be if this shutter sound is controlled on a carrier / region basis or device basis. If it's controlled by detecting what carrier or region it's being used, then taking the phone outside Korea would silence the shutter sound. If it's preconfigured on the device, whether or not the sound will persist would depend on where you originally bought it from. So which is it?