Digital infrared completion.

I'm now at a stage where the camera is giving me the results that I desire, it's taken 10 months of sporadic research and camera building to get to this stage. That and over 1500 photographs, many (most) of which fell short of the mark - during this time I've had to assess not only how to get the camera to do what I want - but also how to best post process the images so that they fulfill their potential.

I'll devote a (most probably long) post to this process, but for now - there is the latest batch.








































































































































Not too shabby :D

More infrared

Well, I've worked out the filtering issues that made it look odd – another specialist red filter over the lens and all of a sudden i had near infrared, take for instance what I had here;



















it's the colour version, only the infrared overpowered it – the UV issues that I was having are clearly evident in the water (the water was brown, but water reflects UV, thus blue – the filter I was using cut out visible light, but not uv or ir) – so I add a red filter (which cuts uv) and whaddayaknow...



















I get black and white infrared, I didn't expect that – and frankly the online guides didn't lead me to it either, so I find that sky's are black...

















and everything's kinda soft and pictoralist...

















and stuff's pretty funky, I wasn't expecting this shit :D

A New Project?

While ambling around a city I bacame fascinated by the spaces that have seemingly been excised from the environment, these are the sites that have been ereased in order to create something new, but they haven't really been ereased at all - sure, the things that have formerly occupied these sites have been removed, but it feels to me like the sites themselves have retained or even gained some kind of resonant tennancy from this action of erasure. Kinda paradoxical really.



















A new project maybe?


















maybe?


















We'll see I guess.

Road trip - again

I've recently found myself on an unexpected, and not entirely welcome road trip, this far I've been travelling for a week or so, On a long boring bus trip I ran entirely out of things to do, so I decided to play with the digi infrared camera and see what came out - as it happens, I think I found something quite interesting.

There were some technical issues that were nearly insurmountable, namely the fact that I was on a bus that was travelling pretty quick and had a camera with a very slow shutter, but i don't feel that really detracts from the images. They have an interesting feel to them, sorta new Zealand Gothic gothic I guess.


















There were of course planty of tree's - One big problem was that the weather was cloudy and cold for some part, thus given that I was working with a camera that primarily see's IR and UV I didn't have much light to work with.


















The shutter speeds also gave something of a differential focus effect, caused by the relitive speeds of near and far things.


















Streams seem to reflect UV light, at the angles that the UV wasn't reflected the IR recording saw the water as black.


















Cow zoom.


















The JPG clipping was also extremely noticable - you can see it here at the top of the tree.



















And there's a selection of 3-400 photo's taken in a prolonged fit of boredom...

More Infrared - now with more yellow :D

Taking the Infrared thing a bit further - I've been using lighting gels to modify the ccd of the camera I'm using, it's a little daunting to go into the internals of a digital camera for someone like me who's used to fiddling with hald century old mechanical camera's - but it's fairly basic to dissassemble and reassemble them when you've done it a few times (took me 6 tries to get it right).

This is the result of the modification I decided to run with - it wasn't the technique that i've heard of other people using - I used a couple of layers of lighting filter on the ccd itself to drastically cut down the transmission of visible light. I kinda like the results like this - and i can add filters in front of the lens to alter stuff from here. None of these are photoshopped at all - they were printed at a digital lab and then scanned (I'm on a road trip and forgot to bring my usb cable).



















This is the result when the flash fires, as you can see I used a blue filter - the auto white balance seems to cope with this when the flash is off - there's still plenty of IR light in this shot to make the tree's yellow. when there isn't strong sunlight the whole image goes to dark blue.


















And this is the result of adding a yellow filter to the front of the lens, black and white infrared - kinda interesting I think :D

Road trip

I went on a road trip to wellington - only 3 hr, but long enough that I (with no car) can't make it very often - I of course took a totally impractical set of camera's - my IR camera (tripper cam) and a holga (which didn't get used). My main aim was to buy photo chemistry and some nice second hand clothes - both aims were achieved admirably. I only took photo's on the way there - while I was there i was too busy shopping. Here's a limited selection.

A random road trip scene - I like the zoom effect.


















Tis the season - i like the colour in this more to be honest - it's wonky :D























A purple hill - no sage involved.

















Some blue trees. As per usual.

















This is a town, I forget which one. The tree's were a pretty purple.

















That is all - just a selection.

And some more digi IR - this was from a walk I went on this morning.

Walking across a train bridge.

















Ditto - same bridge.

















Some tree's - I'm sure I can use this shot for something...

















A cabbage tree - yup.























And a band that were playing this afternoon :D

Infrared at work

I took the taped up wee beastie (digi IR camera - see below) to work and got these.

This is my work place - I work in a hot house pollinating flowers currently - though not for terribly long now. Kinda spooky looking really.



















And this is the view out the back of work.

Yeah, I work in the countryside.