Soft glow of a laser

[Garbz]

My thesis works . Finally I can get back to that thing other people call a life.
Anyway as can be expected from anyone on this forum, the first thing to do once it's working is to document it. Preferably with some lovely lighting and contrast.

By the way the lead up to these images can be seen in this thread: http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=142744 the "what I do" game.

There's my thesis project with 4 of the 12 lasers in the array on. Interestingly enough these near IR lasers are 850nm, but you can visibly see the red dots in the laser cavity. The optics guys couldn't give me an explanation. That said you cannot see the actual dots the lasers make.

To see the dots you need a florescent card, which reacts to the near-IR light by glowing visibly. The laser is actually very tightly focused, but the light disperses in the card so the beam looks pretty poor.

 

[Neophyte Photographer]

Congrats. I like the second shot, but I would go with a little different composition. Very rarely do I see a photo that I really like where something is in focus in the dead center of the image.

 

[Garbz]

Oh most definitely. This was just a photo to prove to my advisor that it was working. We took these Friday at about 9pm.

Come Monday I want to take some more proper photos and this time bring my macro and tripod to get rid of that ever so lovely ISO800 look.