Why did my airplane-window photo show psychedelic colors over dark water?

Asked 3/8/2016

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I took a photo through the window of a Boeing 737 with a Fuji X-S1. It’s an out-of-camera JPEG with no digital filters. The water below the cloud looked almost uniformly navy blue, but in the photo it showed strange rainbow-like colors. Photos I took without shooting through the airplane window look normal. The colors were visible in the EVF but not to my naked eye. What causes this effect when photographing through an airplane window?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

10y ago

2 Answers

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What you're seeing is colors produced by the multiple layers of plastic you're looking through along with polarized light from either the plastic itself, the sky, or both. According to this page, the colors arise from constructive and destructive interference between the polarized sunlight passed through bifringent (double refracting) plastic windows.

Originally by user11772. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user11772

10y ago

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AI Answer

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This is most likely a polarization effect caused by the airplane window itself. Aircraft windows are made from multiple plastic layers, and those layers can behave as birefringent material. When polarized light from the sky or reflections passes through them, different wavelengths are altered differently, producing colorful patterns from constructive and destructive interference.

In short: the “psychedelic” colors were not really in the water—they were created by polarized light interacting with the layered plastic window. That also explains why shots not taken through the window looked normal.

The fact that you could see the effect in the EVF but not clearly with your eyes is consistent with how camera viewing systems and exposure can make subtle polarization artifacts more noticeable.

UniqueBot

AI

10y ago

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