EDP - Experimental Digital Photography

A day when I was feeling completely stuck and frustrated led me to doing something different.

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As part of my testing of the Sigma 4.5mm F2.8 EX DC CIRCULAR FISHEYE HSM lens I went out with my Canon 350D that has been converted for infrared shooting. I was curious to see how the lens would perform in IR.

But in the previous attempt at this article I got caught by my enthusiasm to get out and shoot with this lens as quickly as possible, and screwed up. Thanks to Alexandr Milewski for spotting it. The screw up was that the 4.5mm lens comes with two lenscaps, a normal one and then a lenshood-like cap that clears the protruding front element. I neglected to remove this. You can see the effect below and then the correct version below that.

The Sigma is designed to produce a circular image on an APS-C sized digital camera. The field of view is 180 degrees. A lens like this is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, for sure. I don’t think I would spend the money myself to own one, but then I have only just started exploring this lens.

The shots below were taken with a variety of apertures and I found that the sharpest IR images were produced at f11 with this lens on my camera. The results are most unusual looking. Of course your real image size is much smaller than you may be used to since only the center of the image is used.

The resulting images are most interesting and I will do more work with this lens/camera combination before I return the lens, aside from my general testing of course.
If you are in the US you can buy the Sigma at B&H Photo.

Lens specifications can be found in the lens announcement on DIMi.

You can see the corrected version of this article here. But I’ve left it so you can see the images.
As part of my testing of the Sigma 4.5mm F2.8 EX DC CIRCULAR FISHEYE HSM lens I went out with my Canon 350D that has been converted for infrared shooting. I was curious to see how the lens would perform in IR.

The Sigma is designed to produce a circular image on an APS-C sized digital camera. The field of view is 180 degrees. A lens like this is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, for sure. I don’t think I would spend the money myself to own one, but then I have only just started exploring this lens.
The shots below were taken with a variety of apertures and I found that the sharpest IR images were produced at f11 with this lens on my camera. The results are most unusual looking. Of course your real image size is much smaller than you may be used to since only the center of the image is used.

The resulting images are most interesting and I will do more work with this lens/camera combination before I return the lens, aside from my general testing of course.

Here I have added a black circular mask to cover the internal reflections.

Center of the image at f11

Center of the image at f2.8

If you are in the US you can buy the Sigma at B&H Photo.

Lens specifications can be found in the lens announcement on DIMi.

Lately I have been doing a lot of long exposure photography, both digital infrared and visible light.
In the process of doing this work I have had shots that have been spoilt by flares, fogging and other artifacts. It turns out that these effects were cause because I did not have my eye blocking the viewfinder and had not used the eyepiece blind that most cameras offer.
In the shot below I was using a Nikon D3 with a Hoya R72 filter to shoot digital infrared. With a 15 second exposure there was plenty of time for moving objects, in this case water and clouds, to produce movement. With the eyepiece shutter activated (the Nikon D3 has a lever next to the viewfinder that activates a proper blind), the result in a smooth image that can be converted to monochrome using one of the channels (in this case green).

With the eyepiece blind open the result is very different. Light has leaked in and fogged not only across the center of the image but also down one side. You can see this even more clearly when you examine the three channels individually and see the strong fogging in the blue (the difference in exposure is typical of unmodified digital cameras when shooting in infrared).

All cameras can be affected. Below my Canon 400D had the artifact on the right of the image when the klutzy eyepiece shield on the camera strap was not used.

On some cameras I have seen no image artifacts but rather the exposure has been way off. So get in the habit.

Some cameras make closing off the eyepiece hard and others make it easy. Some will have a proper eyepiece blind. Others, like the Canon Rebel (350D, 400D and 450D) will have a small plastic or rubber blind on the neckstrap that can be slipped over the eyepiece when the rubber surround is removed. Some may have no provision and you will need to make something up. But on every camera it is important to do this when taking longer exposures.

US

Lately I’ve been experimenting again with the use of time as a core tool in crafting the image I want.

Long exposure photography has a variety of lovely effects. I have not only been exploring these but also the technical aspects of the process. These results will be reported soon on The Digital ImageMaker.

This is a normal shot:

This is a two second exposure:

You can see that, in this case at least, the benefits of the much longer exposure are obvious.

Today I wandered outside and offset against a pure blue sky was skywriting being done. Now I could have just looked at it and gone back inside, but I naturally grabbed a camera instead.

The camera I grabbed was my 350D that was converted for infrared photography and my 100-400 f5.6 IS L-series lens. The resulting images, some of which are below, were shot at various stages of the skywriting and sometime afterwards as it started to dissipate.

I think the results are quite interesting and illustrate the point that you should never be afraid to try shooting something. You never know what the results will be.

We often have expectations of what we can and cannot photograph. Usually these expectations are not only completely wrong but they also hold us back in various ways. I had this made clear to me last week.

Last week we got away to the family beach out for a bit of R&R, which was desperately needed. One night we went to an amusement park that is set up on the foreshore every summer. I had my camera gear with me more for security reasons than with an expectation of shooting. But since I was there and I had my gear I decided to try out my IR converted Canon 350D. The results were fun and not bad, pointing to some more work I should do with it.

The resulting images have the now normal to me mixed warm/cool subtle color tones and point to be being able to shoot such activities and get interesting results. Exposures were around f4 or f4.5, 1/45 to 1/60 second and 400 or 800ISO, depending on the amount of light present. I did notice that visible light levels were not always a good indicator of IR levels in this situation, so I let the camera decide.

I this case I overcame a preconception and learned something in the process.

Mostly our camera accessories work for us, but sometimes they get in the way. The Solution is a bit of do-it-yourself.

Over recent months I have been experimenting with long exposure photography. To do this in normal daytime lighting requires the use of a very heavy neutral density filter or something like an infrared filter. These filters cut out so much light, sometimes eight to nine stops worth, that your full sun exposure stretches into minutes.

One of the filter systems I have been using is that by the French company Cokin. This system uses square resin filters and a filter holder that you fit to your lens. This is a great system and works extremely well in normal situations with normal filters. However, what I found in actual use with these very dark (effectively opaque to the eye) is that the filter holder allowed light to leak in behind the filter and fog the exposure. With such extreme filters there was nothing that you could do to cut it completely. I tried draping a cloth over the filter holder but this only helped a little. This is not an issue with the screw in filters because they have a tight fit to the lens.

The solution was a bit of do-it-yourself. The standard Cokin filter holder has three slots to take multiple filters. But even with a filter in the slot closest to the lens there is still a gap that lens can leak through. So what I decided to do is to glue some black leather scraps that I had lying around the filter holder so that with a filter inserted the leather sits up against the filter but still allows the filter to be slid in or out without scratching.



With these modifications in place most of the flare was gone. One more thing had to be done. I needed to use the eyepiece cover incorporated into the camera strap of my Canon 400D. Without it in place it was clear that some light was leaking around the mirror when it was up. With the cover in place (oh how I dream for a camera with a built-in blind) there was no more leakage and the images were clear and sharp.

Don’t be scared to modify your gear if you need to. The results can be great.

A recent flight to Sydney to deliver some photography workshops at the Sydney Hilton had me sitting in a window seat. So I spent the flight happily shooting IR out the window.

Here is one of the resulting images:

To teach my 9 year old daughter how animation can be done, we set about creating the two short animations you can see here by taking many still images with Lauren’s camera with small changes made to the models for each one. We then put these together in Adobe Premier or iMovie and exported the movies.

We spend about two hours on this and it was a great way for my daughter to get some hands on movie making experience.