More on the infrared front

Today the sun shone. Not a big deal, except for the fact that we hadn't seen the orb for about three weeks (how very British of us) and that last Tuesday, my camera came back from the States having had an infrared (IR) conversion and I was itching to try it out in sunny conditions.

IR photography captures the world as we can’t normally see it. Clear skies, water, roads and many other things reflect very little IR while clouds and foliage, including grass, reflect a lot and glow with ghostly IR brightness. IR cameras capture the IR wavelengths in the same way that a normal camera captures visible light so we can process the camera data in exactly the same way; making the invisible, visible.

A trip to the gorge bridge and a quick walk around town produced the following results (presented here in soft pink and deep blue hues):

The Waimakariri Gorge bridge

Back road

The new town clock

Pearson Park playground

I was shooting at f8 with ISO 80 and getting exposure times of between 1/40 and 1/60 second. About one stop less than for visible light. All the metering and auto focusing worked fine and it was just like shooting with a normal camera.

The camera was an old Canon A590 IS which had sat in a draw unused for a few years. The conversion was done by a company called Kolari Vision (www.kolarivision.com) and, while the postal services took their usual time, Kolari Vision turned it around within 4 days (including a weekend) and did a top-notch job.

Oh, Feedly, Feedly ...

... so much promise, so much disappointment.

When Google shuttered “Reader”, it was Feedly that came riding to our aid. We cheered as our liberator rode into town – the news feed famine was averted. Alas, our former saviour has become a right pain in the proverbial. It has, I fear, lost its way.

Who’s idea was it to split the feed into bite sized chunks? Now I never know when I am really done reading. “Done” Feedly says, and then refreshes to show more items. “Done” again; but no, there are more items and then another “Done”. Some mornings I have to go through ten occurrences of “Done” before I am really “All read” done. It’s impossible to know whether I have enough time to read the remaining articles or not because “Done” doesn’t mean “Done” any more. Dumb.

If that wasn’t frustrating enough, for the last week Feedly has been delivering the same four articles at the end of every “Done”. I have read them; honest I have. But no, up they pop again. They aren’t on Feedly cloud, but they are on my Android device and they won’t go away.

So, Feedly, it’s time you left. Yes, I know; I am old and cranky but I’m not going to let you make me crankier than I need be. Did I mention FeedEx? She’s cute.

Tears and laughter

It’s been an unexpectedly emotional three days. Two events caused, in turn, a shed tear or two and secondly very large grin. Both were initiated by National Radio.

On Tuesday Geoff Robinson retired. Geoff has been a passenger in my car every work-day for the last 20 years. He presented National Radio’s “Morning Report” programme and was the voice of sanity in a frequently insane world. It was Geoff that told me about the 9/11 attack on New York; I remember; we were half way along the Tram Road at the time. http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player/2589838

I hadn’t realised how attached I had become but, knowing it was his last day, brought tears of sadness to my eyes. I will miss an old friend who never knew me.

National Radio was playing again today as I drove back from the hospital. Jim Mora decided to play Monty Python’s, “Always look on the bright side of life”. Did that make me smile, or what! There’s one verse that I must try to remember:

“If life seems jolly rotten
There's something you've forgotten
And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing
When you're feeling in the dumps
Don't be silly chumps
Just purse your lips and whistle
- that's the thing.”

Rain and sun; tears and laughter... "There ya go, see!" 

Infra-red (IR) revisited

The last time I tried Infra-red (IR) photography I was using a Nikon D80 and the results were not very good. Exposure times were around 30 seconds and the lenses in my kit at that time didn't play nice with IR and made all sorts of 'hot spots' in the picture. The post processing tools I had available were also not very flexible.

Fast forward a couple of years and I realised that I hadn't tried IR with the D600, current lenses and processing tools. I didn't have high expectations, but was delighted with what I found:

Nikon D600, Nikkor 18-35mm D* lens, Cokin 720nm IR filter, 3sec, f8, ISO800. Processed in Lightroom and Photoshop CC.

Notice the white dot (center top)? That's a daytime moon, mid-day with lots of sun - only with IR. So, all in all and for an unconverted, non-IR camera, the D600 does a pretty good job and the 18-35 D makes a reasonable IR lens (it even has the focus adjustment marks for IR).

Note: I have no idea how the latest 18-35mm *G* lens performs - it is totally different from the *D* being used here and has no IR markings.

Gary Fong Lightsphere

When asked to photograph the opening of our latest exhibition, particularly the procession and karakia, I was worried about how to light it. The room was large (though helpfully white) and the lighting in the room would be subdued (only small spots lighting the work). So, how was I going to get a reasonably even light across the room?

I thought about installing multiple speedlights around the room, but wanted to be mobile as the action could be anywhere. In the end I opted for an on-camera flash fitted with a Gary Fong Lightsphere. I used the sphere without its dome and angled slightly forward (about 30 degrees from vertical) with the (SB700) flash unit set to as broad a beam as possible (see below).

The camera was set to manual at about -2ev from ambient and the flash on TTL. A couple of test shots gave me a little more confidence that this arrangement would deliver the goods, and so it proved:

This was one of the first shots and there was sufficient output from the Lightsphere that I even had to burn down the glare on the white plinth in the mid-ground. What nice even lighting it produced and it even managed to overpower the warm spots (still visible in the far room where the lightsphere couldn't reach. All in all, I am very pleased with the Lightsphere for this type of event photography. Recommended.

Strange requests, bad weather and forgotten keys

Requests to take portraits, photograph homes, golf courses or even bees, are pretty ordinary but today’s request was less run-of-the-mill; can you photograph my lichen? Not knowing exactly what to expect, I packed everything I could think I might need and set out. The day was a bit dodgy, hail showers and stormy winds, so I even packed a brolly – to keep my gear dry.

When I arrived it was indeed plain, ordinary, lichen growing on a log of wood and having a party in the last few days of autumnal wetness. Now I could have offered the lady some previous pictures of lichen which were somewhere on my hard drive at home, but this was her lichen, growing outside her window and therefore somewhat special. And so I spent several minutes on my hands and knees getting a bit damp while pointing the Tokina 100mm Macro at various patches of exuberant lichen.

During the process I realised that there was one item I had not brought with me; an Allen key. For today, my quick release plate decided to part company with my ball head. Macro shots with a wobbly camera – not a great idea. Nevertheless, with a little bit of perseverance and some wonderful new tripod contortions we got the shots and headed home.

Personally, lichen is not my favourite macro subject – even when it is partying it is a little boring. But having spent some time with the files this afternoon, I am beginning to see a giant lichen forest with little people running through it; with Photoshop anything is possible. Maybe I’ll get some more suitable lichen shots, when the weather gets better.

Is that HDR?

Is that HDR? I hate that question. I hate it because (a) it’s irrelevant and (b) it can’t be answered without lying - if I said “yes” it would be a lie. If I said “no” it would still be a lie. There’s a third reason too - (c) usually its a loaded question, preceding an attempt to invalidate the picture as a photograph. Well, duh, its not a photograph; its a picture - cameras take photographs; I make pictures (out of photographs).

But let’s get back to the lying thing. “No” its not HDR (High Dynamic Range) because it was an overcast day and my camera could capture everything necessary in one exposure (and did). However, I did take a series of exposures using a technique called “exposure bracketing”. The picture you were looking at (previous post) came from combining two or more of those exposures using both tone mapping and exposure blending so, if that’s what you think of as HDR, then your answer is “yes” (but it's still not an HDR picture).
But, it gets even more confusing: I also produced a picture that, to the casual observer,  looks almost identical to the one accused of being HDR - similar tonalities, similar contrast, similar details. It was made using only Lightroom and only one exposure - in other words it used none of the features of the so-called HDR process yet, because of its look, it would have undoubtedly invoked exactly the same question - is that HDR? In this case I could have answered “no” with an absolutely clear conscience.
Definitely NOT an HDR:produced from a single exposure processed only in Lightroom:

The picture in the previous post is also not HDR but was created from multiple exposures, tone mapped and blended - some people incorrectly call that HDR.

Let's stop what has always been an irrelevant debate around the misuse of the term “HDR”. It’s a style thing; you either like a picture or you don’t, the HDR question is an irrelevance which makes the questioner sound amateurish and ignorant.

Waimakariri Gorge Bridge

Perhaps because it is so close, this bridge has become a favourite spot for testing new photographic gear or new processing techniques. I like this bridge. So, on the first day of the new year I took a trip back to the bridge under a rather overcast sky. Much of the river-bed downstream was covered with the vehicles of boaties and fishermen so I stayed up high for this picture:

The bridge was built in 1876 and the two piers are 95ft and 115ft, made of cast iron and filled with concrete. For the first 60 years of its life it carried the rail line between Oxford and Shefield but, in the 1930s the line was closed and the bridge converted to a single-lane road bridge which it has remained to this day.

Between times

Well here we are; in that period between Christmas and New Year and finally Adobe has made it possible for me to acquire Photoshop with a clear conscience. Rather than shelling out NZ$1,300 for a CS6 license which was quite ridiculous (on various levels), Adobe's Photography Program allows photographers to have the use of both Lightroom and Photoshop for a little under NZ$12 per month - now that's what I call reasonable, so I will be starting out the New Year with the tool I wanted but couldn't previously justify buying. To celebrate, here is "Akaroa by night" from last month's trip to New Zealand's 'French Riviera':

Happy New Year to everyone.

Oxford Arts Fair

Last Saturday was the opening of the inaugural Oxford Arts Fair. It runs until 22 December with various artists doing demonstrations each weekend. Fantastic turnout on the Saturday for the opening with a good time seemingly had by all. This short video gives a flavour of the event: