Infrared experiments 01

Just a few more infra-red experiments.

First up a quick handheld shot out-of-house to see how visible stars are through infrared. 

It's not really a fair experiment as the moon blows it up but a couple of stars are visible even through that. It's a promising glimpse at what I might be able to snag in the future.

Next up is a couple of vegetation shots from around the bay near my work-place.

The above berries are blackberries, not raspberries.

And finally some woodland "grove" type shots taken from my drive home from work.

That's it, just a quick post today.

Infrared at Kingston lacey

A family day out at the fancy National Trust estate called Kingston Lacey.

I decided to challenge myself with infrared by bringing only the infrared camera with me.

I didn't have any real plan as such, just wanted to see what I could do. I did have hopes there would be some vast green lawns that I could frame the house with.

The very first shot achieves something along the lines of what I was after and the very last similarly so.

I'm pretty happy with the results. I certainly learnt a lot more about what to aim for and what conditions are best. Cloud coverage can drastically impact a shot, not to mention I learnt a bunch of settings I shouldn't really use.

This is a shot facing away from the house showing the road that leads up to the it. The infrared gives the sky a dramatic presence and the tarmac of the road an appearance not unlike a river through snow.

The interiors of the house have less of a noticeably dramatic impact in IR except in the few occasions where you can see some house plants are clearly quite pale white where in a normal shot they'd likely be a darker grey.

You'll notice with this shot and some future ones that there is a bit of a circular glare mid frame. Apparently some lenses are good for IR and some suffer from this. Apparently my lenses suffer from it. It is avoidable in most cases by adjusting the f/stop however but it is reducing some options.

A cat sleeping in the laundry house.

These are nearing  the sorts of shots I've been looking to get. Nice white, foliage in the foreground standing infront of a dramatic sky behind.

I could shoot trees like this all day

The house itself as shot from it;s main law.

Chomp!

Last shot! Two bored cherubs staring into an empty urn...

That's about it, the family had a nice day out and I came away with some shots I coudl be happy with, looking forward to playing with this camera some more.

Infra-red with a Nikon D90

So I took the plunge and invested in a modded Infra-red camera.
Shortly after selling my old Nikon D90 I've gone and bought another one of the familiar old friends with the aforementioned Infra-red modification made to it.

In case you are unaware of what the infra-red modification is that can be made to a DLSR camera I am now going to summarise my understanding of it... which may or may-certainly be wrong.

Essentially the modification allows your camera to capture a different spectrum of light that is normally filtered out. DSLR sensors themselves actually capture far more information than the human eye can see, as a result, these sensors have to be filtered somewhat so that what you capture with your camera is what you'd expect to see.

If you remove/replace that filter with something that allows or restricts the sensor to only the spectrums of light we don't normally see you can get some interesting results where the brightness of an object in a photograph can be impacted by the materials it's made of as opposed to the illumination and colour of it.
 For example, with the infra-red spectrum greens end up appearing quite bright next to a sky where, to the human eye, the greens would be darker or quite similar to the shade of the blue that is in the sky.

For example...

This shot was taken from around the bay near my workplace.

Notice how the sky looks quite dark. This was otherwise a bright blue sky shot on a mid-summers day. Similarly the water is darker.
Compare that to the tree/bush foliage that surrounds the bay, almost as bright a white as the clouds.

I'm pretty sure that doesn't explain it terribly well so here's a link to a wikipedia article but I think the images demonstrate the point.

This flower is a bright yellow dandelion flower.

These berries are a very bright red!

As an example of colour being less relevant than material this example shot of a cyclist shows a man wearing black trousers and a black backpack.

A lot of infrared photography tends to make much more sense in pure black and white but when trying to retain some of the colour, it all comes down to the choice of white balance  during post-processing. 
I'm still experimenting with my creative choices in this area so you might notice a slight variation between images as seen below.

Finally, my preferred shot from my first experimental run. 

Could be better, of a more interesting subject even, but it shows all the potential I was hoping for in the camera/technique, expect to see more IR photography from me in the future..

Photograph of the week #053

"When not scribbling away in a sketch book or dabbling on a Wacom tablet i'm invariably fiddling around with exposure settings on my Nikon D90 trying to capture moments in aesthetically pleasing ways.
So here we have "Photograph of the week" a (mostly) weekly feature showcasing my favourite photo of the week."

So it's now time to re-commence the Photgraph of the Week posts. I took a bit of a break after hitting 52 as it coincided with a house move and there has been little time available to shoot anything.
Now however the camera is back out, some new equipment has been added to the camera bag and the weekly challenge is once again in place!

I took this shot at a familiar location near my place of work. It's shot in infra-red in the same manner that my other previous shots were, using an infra-red filter on my older Nikon D50.

Infra-red photography

I've recently had my attention drawn to infra-red photography.
Not the most ideal time of year for it but still.

There's a few ways to do such photography, the most expensive way is to buy a specialist camera or have a camera physically modified to remove in-built filters that purposely filter out light from the appropriate end of the spectrum... The red end I guess.
The cheaper method, the method of choice for folks such as myself, is to use a filter, these come in varying strengths, restricting the spectrum of light that can pass through the lens to the cameras sensor. The result of which, in camera, is a black and red photograph of, whatever you should choose to shoot.
For a better explanation here's a wikipedia link...

Some cameras work significantly better than others and, fortunately for me the D50 is fairly good for it.

Most folks convert IR photographs directly into black and white images but, with some jiggery pokery in software to get the desired white balance and colour temperature compensation, you can squeeze a bit of colour here and there. The shades of colour you get as a result can differ as per taste/technique however the effect of infra-red photography is quite consistent.

The effect can result in an image that looks quite alien but not quite unrealistic. At a glance it might seem like the image is a mere colour negative of reality, however the specific focus of infra-red light that is captured has a notable effect.
The most noticable effect is that blue skies tend to be darker whilst green plantlife glow up brightly infront of it. The more sunlight the better and the greener the plants the more drastic the effect,while other surfaces tend to appear relatively consistent with reality (though in duo-tone.)

Here are some images from my first trip out using some cheap filters I nabbed off of amazon, it's worth noting that you can't use the auto-focus and as infra-red is a slightly different frequency you'll have to offset the focus ring slightly to compensate. I did this via trial and error myself so it's difficult to explain it precisely, also expect shutter speeds to be long due to the volume of light being restricted through the lens, so bring a tripod.

Here is another set, from a familiar location, near my place of work a few weeks after the above set.
I'd had a little more practice by this time so I believe the standard of images is a little better myself.

This last image is a panoramic stitch of several portrait photographs.