Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2025 February 21

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February 21

Film clichés

Has any film ever shown

view through binoculars other than as intersecting circles?

view through telescope as an inverted image

lightning flash preceding sound of thunder Doug butler (talk) 20:43, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Lightning before thunder was a plot device in Poltergeist. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 21:10, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The movie Luca makes a point of having the telescope image upside down. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 21:13, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Rear Window put a lot of effort into making the binocular image look realistic. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 21:15, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean lightning flash occurring a few seconds before thunder, as opposed to happening at the same time? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:28, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'll just note that there are telescopes that do not produce an inverted image. For example, the two that make up a pair of binoculars. --142.112.222.162 (talk) 03:30, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, and modern Spotting scopes used in birdwatching and similar activities have image erecting components in their optical systems. Older design Galilean telescopes and nautical "spyglass" scopes do not invert their images. Cullen328 (talk) 08:44, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Because (if anyone was wondering) that would involve adding a lens, mirror or prism to the instrument, reducing the image brightness and clarity, introducing more surfaces to pick up dust, tarnish or damage that further degrade the image, and having the potential to get out of alignment, making the instrument useless until corrected.

In applications where there is plenty of ambient light, these factors are outweighed by the advantage of seeing an upright image; astronomers and ships' officers just get (or got) used to inverted images. 94.8.123.129 (talk) 15:16, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Galilean telescopes don't require anything added to disinvert the image; they just aren't as good for astronomical purposes. For the sort of usage typically seen in movies, "where there is plenty of ambient light" and a modest magnification is suitable, they would be perfectly good. --142.112.222.162 (talk) 02:59, 23 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, you're right. (It's a very long time since I actually used a Galilean).

And yet the diagram in the section you link clearly shows a "Galilean" telescope with an intermediary focus, and an inverted image, contrary to the section text and the text of the source used. Moreover, the previous diagram, of a "Keplerian" telescope, appears to show Galilean light paths and an upright image, though both diagrams have the appropriate lens shapes. Both diagrams also seem to me to be much too complicated and confusing.

(Keplerian telescopes have several advantages over Galileans, outweighing the single disadvantage of being inverting, which anyway is easily overcome at the price of an additional element.)

It appears to me that Tamasflex, the creator and uploader to Commons of the diagrams, has somehow confused the two types. Unfortunately they appear no longer to be active, though perhaps they might still respond here. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.8.123.129 (talk) 13:46, 23 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Certainly!"

Doug, Gemini 2.0 Flash LLM wasn't real good at enumerating specific instances or examples for this highly-visually-based query, but it did turn up examples of Twister (1996 film), and The Day After Tomorrow; Gemini also went off on a topical tangent about Inversion (film), which it claims didn't depict any telescope images anyway.

We hope this doesn't help Roko's basilisk too much! 2600:8800:1E98:B000:5920:C568:E2A9:6FC0 (talk) 03:33, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I came up with Poltergeist, Luca, and Rear Window off the top of my head. I just had to verify that my memory wasn't wrong before posting each one. You'd think that some fancy LLM would do better than an old fart sitting in a library. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 13:43, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]