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Dinner tonight (Minestrone soup) involved a carton of chicken broth. Realizing that I had no idea what chicken broth was composed of, I looked at the ingredient list and was surprised to find “Chicken Broth” as the first ingredient, followed by salt and some other, more logically consistent items. (Though logic would suggest that even the salt and other ingredients are infinite, as they are contained in the infinitely-recurring first ingredient).

So I am left wondering: Aside from chicken broth, what is in chicken broth?

Here is an experiment in backlighting, inspired by the latest strobist challenge. There is nothing much to say, really. The vase is backlit with a small strobe, with fill provided by a larger strobe to the left (see setup shot, below).

The setup:

Alternate version:

I have finally worn Rachel down on the subject of energy-efficient Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs. Today, we replaced nine of our incandescent bulbs with spiral and flood-style CFLs manufactured by GE. The quality of the light, while sicklier than tungsten, was deemed acceptable in non-living spaces such as the laundry room, hallway and garage.

Eager to prove that the diminished light quality was more perceived than real, I conducted a test. The photos below feature a traditional incandescent lightbulb on the left, candles in the middle (for some color), and a CFL on the right. The camera’s white balance was set to tungsten, allowing the incandescent bulb to be used as a white reference.

The first photo was exposed normally, roughly simulating what the eye would see. Because the bulbs are grossly overexposed in this photo, they both appear to emit nearly-pure white light. Notice the lamp stands, however. The lamp on the left, illuminated by the CFL, is noticably greener than the stand on the right.

Photo 1: Normal exposure

The second photo was merged from ten individual photos at different exposures using Photoshop’s HDR tool. This composite approach allowed every area of the photo to be properly exposed, including the bulbs and even the filament within the incandescent bulb. Here, the CFL bulb is clearly greener than the incandescent.

Side note: In the faster exposures, I noticed that the CFL light was continuous, even down to 1/8000 sec. I expected the light to pulse at 120 Hz (double the frequency of the power grid), but I saw no artifacts as the shutter speeds climbed above 1/60. This should dispel any notion of flickering with CFLs, but I have to admit that I still “feel” like these bulbs are flickering. It must be in my head.

Photo 2: HDR (pardon the excessive flare and color noise)

Conclusion: I was wrong about the light quality of CFLs (it truly is sicklier than incandescent), but the energy savings make it a perfectly acceptable alternative in certain areas of the house.

The next few months are very exciting, musically.

3/6: New Arcade Fire album
3/20: New Andrew Bird album
4/15: Decemberists in Champaign
4/18: Andrew Bird in Champaign
4/20: Decembersists in Madison (we are obsessed with both)
5/18: Arcade Fire in Chicago (if we can get tickets)

Finally. (I’m mostly tired of the debate, including the excessive bumper, billboard and radio frequency real estate devoted to this subject). Now, maybe the pro-Chief crowd can invest their boundless energy in something that matters.