Vermeer and the optics of painting

I strongly encourage anyone interested in image-making to watch this fascinating movie, titled "Tim's Vermeer."

"Tim" is Tim Jenison, creator of Video Toaster and Lightwave 3D, the staple products of NewTek. The film documents his personal journey in which he reverse engineers a plausible, period correct technique that he hypothesizes Vermeer used to paint his masterworks. He uses his knowledge and understanding of how light is captured and rendered by devices and CG versus how the human visual system perceives light to make very interesting observations about the nature and quality of Vermeer's paintings and how they indicate the use of optical systems to make them.

Then he chooses a Vermeer, the Music Lesson, and recreates the entire scene to scale and then uses his reverse-engineered optical system to paint the scene.

Here is a link to the Rotten Tomatoes page about the film:

http://www.rottentomat​oes.com/m/tims_vermeer​_2014/

Here is a link to the painting:

http://en.wikipedia.or​g/wiki/The_Music_Lesso​n

It is a fascinating film and a must see for anyone whose interests converge in the realm of art, science and engineering.

kirk

I remember the Video Toaster for the Amiga & I still have my Amiga 2000. Sound, graphics, & NTSC video built into the OS, great games, & you could just turn it off anytime without going to "Start" first. I miss the OS. I spent $200 for a 200MB hard drive that held dozens of programs. Now I have images that won't fit on it! Maybe I should put it up for sale to give it a good home.