09 June 2011

Air-blown fibre - Part 2

The air-blown fibre shown below has yet more secrets to reveal.
Now one can clearly see the eight cores (or eight fibres) in the single 'fibre'

Zoomed in a bit more matters become even more obvious.

Yet again we need our matchstick to get a sense of scale.

Perhaps the setup to take these pictures may be interesting to some readers.
In this case a Pentax K-5 (silver!) fitted with a Pentax Auto Bellows K and a Pentax DFA 100 f/2.8 manually stopped down to f/8 at an exposure time of about 15s was used.  Strange how the auto functions of years gone by become manual (if they are old enough).  The Auto Bellows can step down the lens, but no longer fire the shutter, because the shutter mechanism is triggered by an electrical contact.  I cannot use my latest DA lenses because they have no aperture ring to limit the degree of stopping down that will occur.  But I am digressing.  The next post will focus on networks again.