EDP - Experimental Digital Photography

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.

We had the official opening of the ‘A World of Photography’ exhibition on the 30th of November, from 7pm onwards. This was the second event that brought people into the exhibition, the first being a celebration of the accreditation of the new degree course the Australian Academy of Design.

Continue reading A World of Photography Exhbition Opening

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.

Continue reading First light with my 350D converted to IR only

Here is the latest test image. Shot with a 400D, 100ISO, 1/2 second exposure. A bee.

I am still getting what seems to be glar in the center of the image. I am looking at replacing the normal eyepiece with a photo one to see if this works better.

I’ve had requests to show the rig I have been experimenting with. So consider this a first pass at this.

I am using a Chinese made (I am looking at importing and selling them in Australia, as the price is GREAT) stereo binocular microscope that seems to have very good optics. It is a zoom model with a 1-4x objective pair and a 10x eyepiece pair, for a normal coverage of 10x to 40x. I can swap eyepieces for greater or lesser magnification. It has the trinocular head setup so that the camera mounts to a third, vertical eyepiece, also a 10x at present though I will likely swap this for a specialist photo eyepiece at some point.

Below is a picture of the whole rig followed by a closeup of the camera section

Continue reading Microscope Rig

After careful focus setting for the camera eyepiece, so it is parfocal with the main eyepieces, I got the following result with my Canon 400D.

Continue reading 2nd Light with the microscope