EDP - Experimental Digital Photography

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

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.

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:

My Canon 350D arrived back today from LDP in the states (www.MaxMax.com) who converted it for infrared photography by removing the IR blocking filter and replacing it with a 715nm IR filter.

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All digital cameras us sensors which are sensitive to infrared light. Most recent digitals incorporate an IR blocking filter just in front of the sensor that blocks a lot of this light. However, it does not block all. Thus all digital cameras are capable of shooting in IR, just the exposure times can be quite long. This can, in fact, be an advantage for some types of photography, giving a beautiful ‘otherworld’ look as plants move in the breeze and blur, for example.

For detailed coverage of shooting IR with  normal digital cameras, see the articles  here on our sister site, DIMi.