(Translated from the original article on July 14th, 2023)

Hello, this is KA-TSU.

This year, it has been raining heavily since the beginning of the rainy season, and even now, in the last stage of the rainy season, there are still heavy rains in many parts of the country. When the weather is like this, I tend to stay indoors.

In the area where I live, we had strong wind and rain around the beginning of June. I took this picture because this was a very rare situation, as there were hardly any drops on the windows, and the rainwater flowed like a river. I took this picture in high contrast black and white to emphasize the parts that looked like drops.

While inside, I noticed a distinctive light coming from the door of the room and took another shot. This room had four ceiling lights, resulting in four lines of light. I used Soft Monotone to create a soft impression.

Recently, there were heavy thunderstorms every day in the northern Kanto region. The straight line distance was about 100 km to the south, and the entire cumulonimbus cloud was exactly within the 40 mm field of view of the GR IIIx. When a cumulonimbus cloud that is too large reaches the limit height of cloud formation, its upper part spreads out. It is called “Kanatoko (anvil) cloud” because its shape resembles a tool called an anvil.

The left side of the cloud is exposed to the western sun, giving the cloud a three-dimensional appearance. The rest of the sky is a pale blue color with no overall contrast, making it difficult to discern the appearance of the cloud, so the image was taken in Hard Monotone. The title image is another shot taken with a 71mm crop and the same settings.

I was going to use only monochrome photos in this article, but I came across a rare atmospheric optical phenomenon (meteorological optical phenomenon) that can only be conveyed in color.

It is a phenomenon called “sun dog”.

Depending on the atmospheric conditions, strong light can appear on both sides of the sun at a distance of 22° horizontally. If the light is weak enough, as in this case, you can clearly see the rainbow-colored light. This is sometimes called a "vertical rainbow".

The first image was taken with a 40mm lens, and the part of the sun dog was cropped out at 1x magnification.

The second image is the original image with the sun intentionally included. The angle of view of the 40mm equivalent is about 57°, and the distance between the sun and the sun dog is a little less than half the width, so the angle of view can be read as about 22°. Thus, we can identify this phenomenon as a sun dog instead of a normal rainbow or colored cloud. The image as it was taken was paler than it appeared to the naked eye, so I later increased the contrast and made it darker.

I had thought that this phenomenon was not easy to see in urban areas. I never thought I would be able to see it in Yokohama.

This is the season when the cloud conditions are constantly changing. If you look at the sky, you may be able to see other rare phenomena.

(KA-TSU)