Lens__ Circle of confusion

[Daniel Unkefer]

It causes mucho confusion LOL. It's how sharp do you want the print to be. Are you going to put your nose up to it to examine?

[Drew Wiley]

What is the circle of confusion to the Marlboro Man cigarette billboard 30 feet wide next to the highway, blown up from a substandard 35mm frame to begin with - a yard across? Now such outdoor advertising mainly relies on re-programmable multiple pixel panels, with the pixels themselves often nearly that big. So, not exactly circles of confusion, but more like squares of distraction.

Now of course, the Marlboro Man and Joe Camel are frowned upon, and those same freeway positions now carry giant pot advertisements.

[xkaes]

...blown up from a substandard 35mm frame to begin with ...

I don't consider my subminiature formats "substandard", nor do I consider my larger formats "superior". They are different, of course. For example, if the film is the same, the submini lenses actually produce sharper images -- on the same size piece of film. I won't magnify the submini images as much as the larger negatives, but they do quite well for what they are. Some would say they are magnificent.

[Drew Wiley]

xkaes - It's not the relative value of the format itself I was referring to, but the fact that the most prolific Marlboro shot was a rather poor representation of what even 35mm film can do to begin with - not all that sharp, and probably cropped too. And then that gets magnified perhaps up to 500X (!!!) for sake of a large highway billboard. But a freeway is not an art museum, and driving past at 80mph isn't exactly quality viewing time. Just a glance gets the point across for those tempted to smoke. ... But having grown up among real cowboys, they had to prove their own macho with something even more raunchy and carcinogenic - either Old Golds or roll yer own. They even called them "coffin nails", and later in life regretted it. I'm more annoyed by the visual clutter of outdoor advertising than anything else.

[xkaes]

There's no confusion in this circle:

[Drew Wiley]

Ha! I had an uncle who owned a small chain of drugstores and was trying to quit smoking. So he ordered up a private-labeled batch of cigarettes for his stores in black wrappers with a white cross on it, labeled, "Cancer Brand" cigarettes, with a large print hazard warning. He was selling them to other people trying to stop smoking too (it did work for him). But then Reynolds Tobacco sued him, and he had to stop selling them. Anyway, off topic, so I'll leave it at that. ... well, almost. Now that the billboards have switched to another kind of smoke, I heard a cute joke recently : "Why is Colorado voting to pass another pot bill? Because they forgot they already passed one". The huge pot ads along the freeway here are mostly just giant colored text - not even a confused image.

[reddesert]

Correct me as a non native English speaker, but I thought that the correct English expression was: circle of diffusion and not circle of confusion?
I find it a bit confusing...

I've always seen "circle of confusion." That is mostly a photography term, not an optical science term. Generally (in English) diffusion refers to a different type of physical process, a multiple scattering process, like how dye diffuses in water, and would not be appropriate for the effect of defocusing. Places where "diffusion" arises in photographic optics would be the opal glass in a diffusion enlarger, or a soft-focus filter diffuser, for example.

[Tin Can]

I smoked only Camel Straights no filter for a time

Nobody ever “bummed” one

Age 7 I rolled oak leaves

Horrible

There no confusion in this circle:

[xkaes]

"Why is Colorado voting to pass another pot bill? Because they forgot they already passed one".

It looks like New Mexico "got us beat":

Marijuana Buyers From Texas Fuel a ‘Little Amsterdam’ in New Mexico

Sunland Park, along the Rio Grande, has joined the ranks of U.S. cities transformed by state cannabis laws. But the good times may not last forever.

[Drew Wiley]

On a trip through the desert a few years ago I had stop at the first gas station available. It was called, Gas and Grass - a discounted pot if you filled up your gas tank. Reminds me of a local oil-changing service called Lube and Latte. Maybe they recycle. Would I really want to drink that?