Posted by mcc on Jan 26 2011 in Infrared, Digital Infrared
Here’s a re-work of a digital infrared image from last fall - I decided to ditch the channel swapping and go for a more subtle color tonality. You can see the original version here.
Here’s a re-work of a digital infrared image from last fall - I decided to ditch the channel swapping and go for a more subtle color tonality. You can see the original version here.
A great new tool arrived in the mail yesterday – an infrared converted Pentax K10D! This is a digital SLR which has had the infrared blocking filter removed from the sensor and a 720 nm IR filter (blocking most visible light) installed in its place.
I did a lot of work with my standard K10D (and still have it as a backup for the K7). It’s a competent camera with excellent anti-shake and great ergonomics. It is not as full featured as the K7, but it is fast and the missing features are not essential.
So… home in the early evening I fired up the new camera with a standard zoom and stepped outside to take a snap shot of the tulip poplar in my side yard. I set the white balance manually off the green grass. I didn’t expect much in terms of the photo since it was cloudy, rainy, and overcast. But it was late in the day and IR light is a bit more pronounced at twilight. So here’s the first snapshot – I swapped the red and blue channels in Photoshop to enhance the colors:
Today remained cloudy, though a little bit of sun poked through the clouds now and then. With temps only reaching in to the low 60’s, fall certainly is in the air. I ran off to the McLinden trails to see if I could snag a dragonfly or two with the IR camera. With the clouds, gusty winds, and cool temps the dragons tended to keep low to the ground, but there were plenty of autumn meadowhawks out and about. Here’s one IR shot I managed – the bright red dragon takes on a slightly different hue here:
I’m really impressed by how sensitive this camera is to light, which means how great the shutter speeds can be. Just an initial observation – but my impression is that the altered camera is two to three stops more sensitive than a standard camera. I will do some comparisons when we have a sunny day and stable lighting.
Shooting the dragonfly reminds me of a shot that has been languishing on my hard drive for some years now. Here is a Twelve Spotted Skimmer, shot with my old *ist-D and a Hoya RM90 filter for IR work. At ISO 1600 it was a three second shot. Getting the shot was a challenge – I had to set up a tripod close to it, manually focus without the IR filter, put the filter on and shoot. Well, it came out, more of a curiosity than anything else. But it will no longer languish as the sole infrared dragonfly image in the vault.
When I hold a camera in my hands I feel like I am in possession of key that can open up the wonders of the world. I feel all the more like that when there is something special, different, unusual and ephemeral about that key.
This summer I broke out a few of my last rolls of Kodak High Speed Infrared film. 35mm black and white film loaded into a glorious old Pentax LX – if ever there was a key capable of tumbling the barrels of the most obscure lock, this is it…
Oh well – not much to show for it. A stunted, shot up tree out standing in a scrubby field that I visit all too often.
To me the key might be an old camera loaded with expiring and extinct film. For others it might be the latest wonder digital camera and the uber-fabulous long lens. But in photography, keys are ever more available. And once you have that dream-bag full of keys, the real work begins: finding the locks…
With a few days of sunshine last week I finally got around to shooting out the last frames on a roll of Kodak High Speed Infrared, which had been languishing in the camera for a few months.
The sun may have been shining but the ground was still snow covered - and guess what? Bare trees and snow covered ground don’t lend themselves to that infrared look. Oh well - some of the shots from October were interesting.
I like this patch of trees - it is along a dirt road by a pull off where I frequently stop to chase dragonflies. Many a time when I’ve walked back to the car I’ve felt a yearning to just wander off into these little twisted trees, which seem to go on forever.
Where to go on a hot July afternoon? Find a shady spot, of course. That was my logic last Thursday, when I found myself back in a clearing in the Allegan Forest - off of a barricaded two track, off of some seasonal road, off of 122nd avenue, off of M89. It was a place I’ve never been to before – I need to find more spots like that.
You wouldn’t expect that I’d get tired of shooting dragonflies – it seems to take longer every season, but this week I finally lost the dragonfly vibe. Though the fields were teeming with blue dashers and more than a few skimmers of various sorts, I left the digital camera and the macro rig behind. I wandered back into the clearing with a trusty Pentax LX loaded with Rollei IR 400 film, a couple of zoom lenses, and an R72 filter.
I shot two rolls of the Rollei film – 72 frames, but with bracketing only about 20 different compositions. Digital has really spoiled me – I feel like I’ve wasted an afternoon if I don’t take 200 shots. That is one of the great perils of digital photography - you become your own army of monkeys, pounding at the shutter button. Accidental successes seem to be triumphs, but it’s hard to figure out how you got there and recreate the work. Not to mention that accidnets have no concept behind them.
Well - back to the fields and forest. I found a pearl in the sandy soil, often the case there.
This was my third session with the Rollei film. It was shot with the R72 filter, metered though the lens with the ISO set at 200 (thanks, Ray!) Film was developed in HC110, Dil H (1:66) at 20C for 24 minutes, with very low agitation (gentle agitation every 3 minutes for the first 12, then every 60 seconds.) I like it, but I don’t see it as a replacement for HEI. It’s much too slow with the R72 filter, and I really like using a plain red filter and being able to check and tweak the composition as I’m hitting the shutter button.
Rollei IR 400, with an R72 filter, is also a pretty high contrast film. Despite my attempt at using HC110 as a compensating developer, the film is a tough beast to tame with shadow areas virtually clear on the negative. But, when it comes to B&W shots, contrast is your friend. Not a friend I’ve really come to terms with, but working with this film has been a big boost in helping me understand and work with higher contrast mono shots.
Note: Additional development times (stand process in HC110) can be found towards the end of this post: Ludington Dunes.
A few months ago I ordered what will no doubt be my last rolls of Kodak High Speed Infrared film. It’s sad to see an old standby pass on, but while online buying film, I decided to pick up a few rolls of Rollei IR400.
I was looking for a film that could produce the same startling infrared affect that the Kodak film delivered. After shooting a couple of test rolls, it seems that the Rollei film is certainly up to that task. Here are a few first impressions of the film, plus tips regarding exposure and development.
Exposure: Without a filter, or with just a #25 red filter, setting the ISO to 400 and metering through the lens worked fine. As with most ISO 400 films, though, I prefer the results at ISO 320 or even 200.
As you’d expect, there is no IR effect when shooting without a filter. And, unlike some other IR films, there is very little IR effect when shooting with a #25 red filter. To get a pronounced IR effect I had to use a Hoya R72 infrared filter.
My first experiments with the IR filter were disappointing. I utilized a 5 stop filter factor, so I metered at ISO 400 with no filter and then increased the exposure by 5 stops – effectively shooting at ISO 12. I bracket up and down a stop, for ISO 24 and 6. Unfortunately, with the R72 filter in place, this still resulted in a grossly underexposed negative.
So the second time around I ramped up the filter factor to 7 - 10 stops – shooting at ISO 3, 1.0, and even 0.5. The shot above was metered at ISO 1.0 and was taken with the R72 filter in place. In bright midday full sun, with the lens at f16, this was a 1 second exposure – pretty darn long and comparale to the digital IR work I’ve been doing. (Just to be perfectly clear for folks trying to wrap their heads around adjusting exposure to compensate for filters – I metered the above shot with the camera set to ISO 400. That gave me a recommended setting of 1/500th of a second. I then clicked the shutter button to increase the exposure by 9 stops to 1 second even.)
The R72 filter was critical for getting the distinct IR effect. The image below compares two shots, one taken at ISO 200 with a #25 Red Filter, and the other with the R72. While Kodak HIE, Ilford SFX, and even the now long defunct Konica IR750 all produced good results with the plain red filter, with the Rollei film the red filter just doesn’t cut it. The technical specifications sheet recommends a deep red filter, but I have not tried that.
Development: Having only shot two rolls of this filme, I processed the first in Rodinal 1:50 and the second in HC110 Dil H (1:66). The roll dipped in Rodinal was grainy – very grainy. The HC110 roll had much more subdued grain, and much better tonal range (of course, that is also a result of the second roll being better exposed.) The successful process with HC110 was 20 minutes and 20C, with agitation one per minute for the first 15 minutes, and every 30 seconds for the last 5 minutes. For the next roll I’ll probably drop the agitation for the first few minutes, and extend the time, in hopes of coaxing out a bit more shadow detail.
Rollei IR400 is the first 35mm film I’ve used that has a water soluble anti-halation / dye layer. While this is generally the rule for 120 and 220 films, I wasn’t expecting it in a 35mm format. As recommended on the Massive Development Chart, I pre-soaked the film for 5 minutes before developing .
In conclusion, I’m really happy with the rest results from this film, and am looking forward to doing more work with it.
Spring is hiding this April – lurking in the melting mounds of snow that shrink at the edges of parking ramps, under the brown grasses and leafless trees, in the cold rain that falls more often than not. Now wildflowers are blooming – yet. Few insects take to the air. A few green buds hint at what is coming.
Late last week, though, the sun shone brightly and temperatures rose enough to melt most of the remaining snow – except in the shaded places. I went to the Allegan Forest to see if I could coax out some glimmer of the hidden season with an infrared photography session. What better way to search for something hidden, than to look with invisible light? Or so goes my logic, or whatever.
At least the melting snow let me get at areas that have been difficult to reach these last few months. First off was a visit to the vernal pond – more like a vernal marsh – off 48th street. Beginning in a few weeks and then for the rest of the summer this place will be full of all sorts of dragonflies. This is the time of year when the marsh is the most flooded – this shot below shows (in graphic infrared hues) the flooded out and trampled down grasses that will rise up 4 or 5 feet out of the marsh by late spring. By July or August I’ll be walking through the area shown here – the marsh will shrink down to just a small wet area (the heart of the marsh) by the end of the summer.
But surely dragonfly larva slink through the icy waters, even now, dreaming of the days when they will take to the air…qq I also visited some areas north of the river – along the bluffs rising above the flooded flood plains below. In particular I explored a steep embankment off 125th street – which is a rutted two track at that point. The steep slope faces due south, and the first hepatica leaves, and even a few flower buds, were poking out of the dried leaves. The micro climate at this place makes it green up earlier than anywhere else that I visit, so in a week – maybe two – the hepatica should be abundant elsewhere.qq Here’s another infrared shot from the same area – this one of a pine tree, somewhat close up, though not a close-up. Not much to say, but I like it.
All of these photos were taken with the Pentax *ist-D and an RM90 IR filter.
I also experimented with Rollie IR400 during this trip, shooting alternatively with an R72 IR filter, and a standard #25 red filter. The first time out with this film was not so successful – none of the shots with the R72 filter came out well, and the shots with the standard red fitler show little IR effect (though as a standard B&W film it looked fine.) The shots with the R72 filter were metered at ISO 25, and were bracketed one stop plus and minus. In hindsight, I realize that I should have metered at ISO 12 or even 6 – so I’ll be back to try again. I also underdeveloped the film – which did not help things.
Well – let’s hope I got all the mistakes out of the way on this first try. With 4 more rolls in the fridge, I’m eager to give this film another try. In the meantime, here are some other digital infraed images from this spring: