Seeing things in a different light

A few months ago I chronicled my conversion of an old bridge camera that I had lying around into a infra-red play thing.

Since then it has been a trusty companion over the last few months and I thought it would be a good time to document what I have learned in using it.

The first thing to state, is despite is lowly specifications (7MP)  I can truly say that I have had more fun with with this little hacked cameras than with my more expensive and larger DSLR kit over the summer months.

There are a number of reasons for this,including it's novelty and learning about new photography techniques, but a large part is down to the cameras lightness.

Despite my main camera being a comparativelysmall DSLR. I have come to appreciate a camera that does not weigh you down. In fact, so much so, that I have started to re-think my next camera choices.

I had been tempted bya Sony A-77 Mk II (on the basis that it now seems likely that their will never be another A -Series DSLR). However while now doubts a fine camera, it is comparison with my present kit, a heavy and large beast. So now I ma considering a Sony A-6000 (presuming there is no new consumer E-Format camera in the next few months ). I have even begin to think the unthinkable about other small mirror less cameras such as the  Olympus OM-D E-M10 or the Fujifilm X-T10.

However that is all for the future. What I want to say now is what I found after playing around with IR photography for a few months.

The Best Subjects

 

Like I said, I have been taking a lot of IR photos over the last few months and I feel I am starting to get an idea about the best ways to take IR photos.

So what have I found in the last few months.

The Good

 

Trees.

Trees just look fantastic in IR, particularly when in full foliage. In fact I am in danger of starting to build a collection consisting of just standalone trees. Now I cannot resist taking pictures of lone trees against a sky background in IR.

They look especially good with a 850mm filter on. This is because foliage is such a great IR reflector that you get great definition without the green from the leaves overwhelming the picture (eyes are very sensitive to green so can obscure other details)

Clouds

One of the great advantages of IR photography is that IR light is not absorbed by water vapour as much as visible wavelengths are.

This means otherwise hazy skies have much greater contrast and definition in IR light. Take an IR picture on what otherwise appears to be an overcast day, and it results (to my eyes anyway) in pictures of stunning skies, with great cloud definition. I find IR works particularly well when the sky is partially cloudy, but not great on totally overcast days

Landscapes

Since IR photography takes such great pictures of trees and skies, it should be no surprise that landscapes look great too. Because grass is a great IR reflector too, landscapes get an almost fairyland appearance, like they are winter snowy scenes (but without the need to endure sub-zero temperatures to obtain them)

Buildings

Buildings, especially when in full sunlight come out with high contrast, which really suits architectural photography. I'm a great fan of Joel Tjintjelaar  and Julia Anna Gospodarou work in taking high contrast black and white pictures of buildings and cities and I wonder whether there is a role of  IR in this form of photography

Bare Metal

Anything with bare  metal such as old cars, motorbikes and vintage aircraft all look really good in IR. (Trivia point. David Lean's much underrated film the breaking the sound barrier used IR film for many of the flying sequences).

One of my issues with the camera is that it istoo slow to capture such images apart from when they are static.

The bad.

So IR cameras can take some great images, but there are downsides

Low Light

Some think that IR photography allows you to take pictures in the dark. However this sort of camera is just not sensitive enough for that sort of photography.

In fact with the filter basically cutting out over a third of the available light, it is actually far less sensitive than a normal camera before the conversion.

The camera I converted is a product of its age and was not greatly sensitive to begin with. In fact one of the things that has improved greatly with modern cameras is how far you can push their sensitivity before noise starts becoming a problem. However with this camera, anything oner ISO 200 risks too much noise. So generally the camera only works well with a wide aperture in good light

Noise

The corollary of low light performance is image noise. In truth all IR photography will suffer from noise due to the fact we are using just one channel of our sensor(link?). This means the sky especially can show a lot of salt and pepper noise. Now this can be removed with a good photo package, but with the risk of a subsequent loss in sharpness. Saying that, some people actually like the noise and it can add to a picture in some situations.

Photos into the sun.

With IR you have to be very careful in where you are in relation to the sun.

Generally any picture taken up to 45 degrees from the sun will result in flares in the photo. Again these can sometimes add to a picture, but it is a hit and miss affair and generally should be avoided. One thing I need to try,  is to see if fitting a sun hood will help in this.

However generally it is a good idea to try and take the pictures with the sun behind you as much as possible.

Like Icarus, too close to the sun. Not ruined though

The Ugly

People.

Not all subjects come out well in IR photography.

While people give off IR, the camera is just not sensitive enough to distinguish features well. People come out bland, washed out and pretty weird in IR, so IR portraits are probably not a good idea.

However that doesn't mean you should never take photos of people, but you need to be aware of it's limitations (It have some interesting ideas how I can use the effect as we move into Halloween)

Other thoughts

 

Filters

So far I have bought only two filters to put on the front of the camera, a 720nm and 850nm filter. The difference being is that a 720nm crosses the cusp between visible and IR light, meaning as well as getting more light through, we also get some color.

The 850nm lets virtually no visible light through at all, but you do get a "purer" infra red image.

Of course there is nothing stopping you converting a photo using the 720nm into black and white later, but I must admit I like the 850nm more and have probably spent a lot more time with it.

I have found myself using the 850nm filter far more than the 720nm just because I like the effects.




Processing

The advantage of the 720nm filter is that it can be processed to give blue skies. This a bit of a trick caused by the fact that red in the sky leaks through with this filter on.  To get a blue sky from the red, what is required is to swap the red and blue channels. While the effect can be effective, to me it can appear a little faked. Also it actually results vary widely and I need to experiment to see what are the best ways to achieve this effect.

With a 850nm filter, the image benefits from compressing the limits a little bit. In  fact I find the most effective IR photos are those where the limits can be easily compressed without losing the signal.,

Apart from that, some noise reduction can benefit some photos, especially if the sky is very noisy.

720nm picture before swapping the channels

After processing

Going forward

Like I said, I have had some great fun with the camera despite its lowly specifications. However as with all cameras, the more you use it, the more you are aware of its limitations.

Firstly, although I have not had too many problems with resolution due to the 7MP sensor , a few more MP would be useful, especially if I have to crop the image.

The biggest issue however is pour ISO  noise. Because it is a camera of it's age, I don't really like pushing the ISO too much, because it quickly becomes noisy. This limits to only using the camera in good light and full aperture. It also means that the shutter speed is quite slow.

Therefore I am already thinking about doing a conversion on another Camera. While I would love to see what a Sony A7S II would do as a IR camera, I may have to set my sites a little lower. (I did see someone had done a conversion on a A7R. I have mixed emotions on this. My 1st is jealousy, my 2nd is amazement that anyone has a £1600 'spare' camera)

A tempting target is a Sony NEX-3, which are only about £100 on ebay. One downside is that it does not have a viewfinder, but in every other respect looks perfect.

Until then I still want to try some other things out, such as playing more with the 720nm filter, maybe trying some other filters and seeing what IR cameras do as we move into Autumn and Winter and seeing what happens with flashes.

Playing with IR has been a great experience to me and opened a whole new world of opportunities. You could say that I have seen my photography through a totally new light :)

Useful Links

•  http://www.wrotniak.net/photo/infrared/ Bit out of date, but a good resource
• http://www.lifepixel.com/galleries/infrared-photography-gallery some quality IR photos
• Getting Started with IR - A good beginners technical guide
• IR with a A7R - Yes some people can afford to buy a A7R just for IR!
• Easy IR conversion guide
• IR Basic tutorial
• Simon Pearce IR photography
• irbuzz.blogspot.com - this blog is a bit out of date, but some useful links

Copyright or Copywrong

It is said that there are 2 types of Photographers when it comes to copyright.

Those who are afraid their Photographs will be stolen, and those who are afraid that they won't

In that light this blog looks at copyright of photography, who owns it and when it expires.

Those who have been following my blogs know that one of my photographic hobbies is rephotography. This involves taking an old photograph, taking a modern photo from the same spot and overlaying the two together.

Up till recently I had not given much thought about the copyrights of the photo involved. It is not  because I was deliberately ignoring it or trespassing on another photographers rights. It was because

a) the photos were in most cases over 100 years old
b)  I was not using them to make money but to create a derivative work.

I therefore assumed that I was doing nothing wrong copyright wise.

However I had a run-in with copyright as explained in this blog which made me think a lot about copyright law and many of the common misconceptions

I guess here we must add the usual advisory note here. I am only here concentrating on UK copyright law. Other countries may ,and most probably do, have different laws. Also this is not legal advice. I have no legal training nor desire to get any. This is based on minimal research and understanding. If you have a copyright issues, please see a lawyer (but take a large check book)

Anyway you have in your possession a old photo and you wish to use it in some way. How do you assess its copyright status. This is not clear, so in an attempt to clarify some of the issues I have put together a simple flowchart to help your deliberations.

Original information from http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/pdfs/copyrightflowchart.pdf

You see it's simple. To work out if a photo is out of copyright you need to find the following pieces of information:-

• When the photo was taken
• Who by
• Are they still alive? If not when did they die.
• Was it published and if so when. 

Once you have gained this information and gone through the above flowchart, you are now in a position to assess whether a photo is out of copyright.

If you think this is a bit over the top, then join the club.

Now in my previous blog, it may seem I was a bit anti-copyright. This is not true. I can see the point of it when it comes to stopping some poor photographer having his labours ripped off by big corp. But the lengths of time of copyright seems out of proportion to it's benefit. Yes, artists must benefit for their work, but for 70 years?

Put it like this. As a software developer I write code, which could be considered creative works. I am sure there is code running around I wrote 30 years ago still in use. However I am not expecting that I will get a check through the post every time someone uses my software for the next 40 years.

There is also an important point about copyright that is easily forgotten. It is called a right, which makes it sound like something the state protects you against. But there is no government agency for collecting royalties, sorting disputes and policing transgressions. If you feel your copyright has been trampled on, your only remit is to sue, with the cost and pressure associated with it.

In some ways this makes a mockery of the whole law. We may worry about our work being stolen (Can a digital photo be stolen? Surely stealing indicates that you have deprived someone of its use), but at the end of the day it is unlikely you will ever do anything about it. In the meantime there is a law that restricts the creative process and provides undue influence and power to those with the resources to employ armies of lawyers (Although firms like Getty's have started to bow to the inevitable and made a lot of there photo's available royalty free)

In a digital age, where art is now so fleeting and virtual, copyright law feels like something from a by-gone time, a bit like restricting grazing rights for your cows. There is nothing worse than a law that does not protect those it sets out to, other than a law that provides power to those with money and the ability to wield it.


Some links to information I used on this blog.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photography_and_the_law#United_Kingdom
http://www.artquest.org.uk/articles/view/old-photographs1

Things to check...

Last year I had in terms of birthday terms a significant event. Now I am not a great rejoicer of birthdays, not seeing much point in celebrating 1 less year until my inevitable demise (as you can tell I am a joy to be around at these times), but what I also dread is presents.

The problem is I expect that my dearest and nearest will know what I want, and they almost without fail, fail to deliver. This birthday I was dreading even more, but to my great surprise they pulled through. They paid for me to go on a photography course in deepest Shropshire.

The course run by these guys (Nature Images) was excellent, despite me managing to forget my tripod (this is starting to be a theme) and as a bonus I could spend a whole day just playing with my camera.

The big thing I came away with was that I had been approaching photography the wrong way.

Firstly I had been photographing in JPEG rather than RAW. Basically I did not want the effort of converting the RAW files to JPG each time. But as I found out, RAW gives you far more flexibility in terms of post-processing to get the best out of the photo.

Secondly I generally left the camera on auto. But as the instructor showed, it makes far more sense to move to aperture priority.

Aperture priority allows you to control the 3rd dimension in photography, the depth of field.  Basically if the aperture is wide open you get a very narrow depth of field which is great for photos where you want to blur the background like portraits, while landscapes you generally want a deep depth of field so need a very narrow aperture. He also showed how you could play around with the white balance to change the warmth of the photo (although obviously if shooting in Raw this can be done in post processing)

Just a note here. I can never remember which f stop is wide aperture and which is narrow. Basically the f stop numbering system is counter-intuitive, so basically I remember it by if when you are dialing in your aperture your shutter speed is going up(i.e. getting shorter), your aperture is getting larger(More light, less speed required).

The final lesson was that as a rule you want to shoot in as low a ISO number as possible. Now modern cameras get better and better low light performance, but generally ,even now ,as soon as you go past ISO 800 noise is starting to creep in and if you push it to the max you get a noisy mess.

However if it is a dull day and you want to have a deep depth of field(meaning long shutter times) then sometimes you have no choice but to increase the ISO rating (The same can apply if you want to use the long end of a zoom). But as a general  you want to keep the ISO as low as possible. In auto mode, the camera tends to do this automatically, so you may think you are getting a great photo in low light, but when you get back, there is so much noise it is unusable.

He also showed how even good photos could be tweaked with photoshop to make them even better(I'm sure I'll talk about this in another blog)

I bring this up now because last night I went back to my moonlight job as Dad's taxi. I had to take my daughter to a singing lesson in Whitwick. My choices were sit in a car for an hour, or grab my camera and see if I could find anything to photo (guess which I chose)

Now Whitwick will never beat Venice as the place most people would want to photo, but actually it has a few pockets of almost Derbyshire peak district landscape. Also the light was good, with blue sky and bit of cloud, with the sun was approaching the golden hour, so I found a nice walk and took photos of anything that took my fancy.

This mainly consisted of the plant life. While flowers themselves are not always the most interesting subjects it does allow you to play around with the depth of field. The secret of a good flower shot I think is  to find 1 good specimen and take the photo with a very shallow depth of field.

Anyway after 3/4 hour I had taken a few photos of bluebells and other flowers, I went to change the setting on the camera. It was at this point I realized that I had been shooting the whole time at 3200 ISO! Now the photos were not ruined, but they would not be as sharp as I would like.

The problem came about because again I was in a hurry so did not take 5 minutes to check my camera.

So I have decided to do something about it. I am going to make a checklist which I will attach to the camera. Basically it will say something like this

1. Check Battery
2. Check Memory Card
3. Check File type(Raw)
4. Check Camera settings (Mode, Aperture etc)
5. Check White Balance Setting
6. Check ISO setting
7. Check Exposure compensation level

What I really need is simple mnemonic to remember. Unfortunately the acronym for this is BMFSWIE which is hardly memorable. If anyone has a better aide de memoir then answers on a postcard.

This was taken with the high ISO. Blown up the noise is very visible

Noise can work for you too. The noise adds to the glow here

My ambition is one day to take a decent photo of swallows. Preferable in flight

Again noise has helped with this hawthorn

ISO much lower, and the background shows it

First Post

This blog is about my journey through photography. I am not a professional photographer nor am I ever likely to be one. My only hope is that one day I can be considered a competent one.

This blog is a recording of my journey along that road, so that others can trace my path.

I have a couple of rules/restrictions however which makes my journey more challenging than some.

Rule 1

The money I earn in my day to day job is there to keep a house over my family's head and food in their stomachs(I have a teenage daughter so this is considerable). Even once all the bills have been paid, only a small proportion can be allocated to what after all is only a hobby. So no £5000 lenses or multiple camera bodies. Even £100 for a big stopper filter seems extravagant when there are so many other demands on my cash. So this is photography on a budget. It is finding out how to do the best within limited means. And while I would love to have the cash to buy whatever I want, in some ways I like the restriction because it forces me to be more imaginative with what I have.

Rule 2 

I have a growing family. One day they will flee the nest, but up to that point I want to spend as much time  as I can with them. So no exotic trips to the most photogenic locations in the world or safari's to the worlds best wildlife haunts. Most of my photography will need to be restrained to where I live and the surrounding areas. Not only that, but the time I can spend on my hobby is also limited by the demands of the very same family. While some can spend hours waiting for that shot or setting up there kit, my time available is measured in minutes(if I'm lucky). The fact I have a day job limits me more. But again like money, I don't see this as a restriction, but a challenge that will make me a better photographer.

The truth is my challenges is not so very different to many others out there. This blog is a salute to others like me who strive to get the best despite the challenges heaped upon them.

It will also once in a while allow me to rant a bit. Let me apologize in advance for that.