Highway Camera Field of View Issues

Most of the NB Highway cameras fall into one of six catagories:

(1) Highway sweeps from bottom left to vanishing point in upper right. This is a standard "industrial view" it allows a close-up view of the road surface and enough narrative to understand the local weather. I would guess this meets the ideal intent of the highway camera.

(2) Highway sweeps from bottom right to vanishing point in upper left. This is essentially the same as above but from the other side of the highway.


(3) Highway runs from center bottom to vanishing point center top. This works for divided highways and for the most part gives a good view of traffic flow in both directions. There seems to be a reduction in the quality of the view of the road surface.

(4) Highway runs horizontally across field of view. This seems to be a rare choice and seems to be of limited value. Especially in winter you have a limited view of the road surface hidden behind snow banks. I assume the traffic engineers prefer the three previous catagories.

(5) Intersection. I guess this needs its own catagory but has elements of some of the previous catgories.

(6) Panorama or Scenic. OK this is not an objective catagory but it just seems that some fields of view have a greater narrative sweep than others. Especially here in NB where the images of most cameras are of barren roads in desolate landscapes. You just have to like looking at Durham Bridge, Copp Loop, Aroostook River and Welsford for the potential human contact.

Shots of the Day: 20.02.08

On one hand we can celebrate the return of the Moosehorn Creek camera to active service. The camera seems to be a standard left to right sweep from camera to the highway vanishing point with about 1/3 sky and reasonable picture quality.

On the other hand the new MRDC Coytown -Sheffield camera came back on for a short period but the field of view and picture quality have gone to a very bad place. It stopped again at 2:47.


I just liked this photo alot. The camera has an excellent narrative field of view and when it turns to the nightime shutter speed it makes the light trails more exciting.


Summary page for 6 PM

Shots of the Day: 19.02.08

Well, it was good to have a clear sky again. As you can see in the summary page below pretty much everyone was enjoying blue sky all over the province. The parts you can see at least. It would appear that dramatic changes in humidity and temperature play havoc with the cameras with five of them down today.


Even more distressing however was that the much appreciated Coytown - Sheffield camera stopped working today after one day in service. After 1:54 PM it was the same image for the rest of the day.

It is amazing what a day of warm rain will do to a thick layer of snow. Almost any location would show the same thing but these two photos of the farm on Copp Loop pretty much sums up the difference.

I got a kick out of the live video feed from the Confederation Bridge today. In the morning the ice was moving very fast north to south (left to right in the photo below). You could see the ice moving in reael time and piling up on the bridge supports with large sheets lifting and fracturing.


Then in the afternoon the ice was flowing just as hard in the opposite direction. What is strange about this picture is that there is a small car behind the truck and I have no idea what they were thinking but they were very close to the back of the truck. People not like us.

Shots of the Day: 18.02.08

OK, so today was a bad day for highway camera photo quality. It snowed last night and then turned to warm rain. Cold ground and warm humid air means fog. Almost all the cameras had problems with water on the lens for most of the day and some just never got better. I did see a police car for the first time early this morning in Blackland.

And my first snowplow at Mont Farlagne.

But all in all it was pretty awful. The only time the grey lifted was for about 20 minutes when a patch of blue sky showed up over Bathurst and moved on to Stonehaven and then disappeared.

But any day that they fire up a new highway camera has got to be a good day so I will end with a slide show of images from today that had something other than empty road or cars. Mostly transports but there are some other vehicles too.

New Camera Day: 18.02.08

A new highway camera has been brought online. The new camera seems to be on the South side of the Saint John River where the highway crosses from Sheffield to Coytown. This is an issue that I intend to pick up in a later posting but the traffic engineer that set up this camera has a bit of a poets eye in terms of the field of view. Some of the cameras have a very bland or even bad framing but this camera will soon be one of my favorites. The frame has the river bank, bridge and river in it. You can see the head of one of the islands in the river and the frame is about 1/3 sky which will make the photos "pop" when we have clear weather. This is a good addition to the family.

The camera must have been up on the MRDC website for awhile but was only linked to the provincial page this morning. I see that there is a 8 minute difference between MRDC time and Provincial time. It also appears to be on a 30 minute not a 20 minute cycle. The MRDC page seems to indicate pending cameras at Salisbury and Longs Creek although the link for Longs Creek perversely shows an image from the Coytown-Sheffield camera.

Shots of the Day: 17.02.08

You know, when I started this exercise I figured that if I sat on the highway camera website especially in the early morning I would see some wildlife on the more deserted stretches. Nope. I thought I might see the odd speeder caught on the main highways. Nope. I thought there might be the odd snow plow or hitchhiker. Nope. Just a lot of photos of deserted winter NB highway.

Today I thought I would catch a bunch of church folks in Durham Bridge but the 11 AM photo was pretty tame. I guess they have better things to do in Durham Bridge.



I happened to go by the local highway camera, weather station mast today and snapped a photo. the mast / station is pretty inconspicuous and is easily missed / ignored.

I don't know what was up with this transport just outside of Saint John this morning but he was there for a while.

Set of Highway Camera Shots for Evening in NB 17.02.08

I thought I would try something different today and collect a dawn to dark set of photos for one camera. I chose Mount Farlagne and you can see the clouds lower and two separate storms come through.

Shots of the Day: 16.02.08 (Sunrise in NB)

Man, that was a beautiful and bitterly cold day. Same issues with the cameras as before with Shediac Bridge and Moosehorn Creek down and several cameras obscured by frost or snow. In fact, the sequence of frost receeding across the lens of the Aroostook River camera was kinda neat.

Today we ask the question: If you are a genius traffic engineer setting up a traffic camera perhaps it shouldn't be set up so that the rising or setting sun shines directly into the camera? We have today a selection from early this morning that demonstrate this problem but actually are very nice once you heglect the glare.

Flicker set for today