Infra Red Landscape

What worries me, is how much beer I'll have to buy to repay all the folks who are improving my images!

Hi Niblue,

So the squiggle is the noise reduction, applied to the whole image. I see. It does look like swirling leaves.

I know what you mean about the grain looking heavy handed, I think it was done on the lowest or second from lowest setting, but obviously on an image of this size, it's going to be more prominent than on a higher res one.

I think there is a danger in trying to make digital images look like film ones, or at least trying to do that with all your B+W ones. I do like the smoothness of digital images, the lack of grain.

Why did I put it in then? Oh yes, to please John

Now the sun's out, and I've got fluffy white clouds, there's an Oak tree in a cornfield down the road. I'm off!

Dan

Actually, I remembered as I walked down the road, the Corn was 3 years ago, this year it's Rape. Not so photogenic.

So I wandered into my local park, and had a mooch about. Best of a bad bunch below:




What I did try when converting my RAWs (in Pentax Photo Lab) was fiddling with the white balance (handy if the red channel's blown out a bit), but then I tried picking a grey point, which darkened the whole image down (cut the red right back), and then increasing the sensitivity by the full extent. This gave this image:




Boosting the levels in photoshop rather than using the sensitivity gave this:




Normal IR processing gave this (not a huge difference from a polarised shot IMO, although grass is lighter):




What intrigues me about the 'colour' ones are the funny shapes around the centre and top of the image. Not sure what caused these. Reflection of lens from back of filter? Any ideas? Other than that, I quite like the surreal look of these ones, although banding is apparent on them because of the boosting of the sensitivity.

Any comments, of course, gratefully received.

Dan

That's what it looks like to me - I've seen something similar myself when shooting IR with a Cokin filter. Where in the holder was the filter mounted? I've seen problems if I don't fit the filter in so that's it's right up tight against the holder.

Anyway it's nice to hear someone is enjoying the nice weather while some of us are stuck in the office...

Hi Niblue,

Yes, Cokin filter, in the first, non-polariser, slot. I'll have to remember to shade it better in future. I was keeping the direct sunlight off, but obviously there was enough ambient light, bearing in mind the long exposure, for this to show.

Perhaps I'll have to get some black velvet to drape over me, I'll look like a proper photographer then.

Dan

I finally got round to taking a few pics using my IR filter this morning.

normally I think having ones shadow in the image is a mistake, but this one works for me.
I see the fence on the left and the shadow of a fence and photog at the bottom, and suddenly, a surreal, almost alien landscape bears a human element.I like it.

I took some shots with my shadow in it and some without (I was using the 2s mirror lockup to give me time to back away) however the one I preferred the exposure on was this one which just happened to have me in it.

Cheers - I do like the IR effect so I'm looking forward to getting a few more shots.

I like that dreamy feel to that shot niblue, they way the clouds seem do be doing their own thing.

I took this shot at a local park on one of the hotter days recently
Samuel is trying to catch tadpoles and water snails!

Ammonyte - that's a lovely shot, very nice indeed.

As I was playing around in Elements anyway I applied the technique I've been reading about for using unsharp mask for contrast enhancement, so here's my digital interpretation of your shot:




Amount: 75%
Radius: 12.6
Threshold: 10

Thanks Niblue I think in future I'll sub-contract the digital processing. 1 beer (or short) per photograph. Any takers?

not a bad idea, but some of us work for draft, and others can get really pricy with the single malt scotches.....mind you you do tend to get what you pay for....just don't submit your orders close to closing time....everything tends to get blurier (soft focus) as the girls get prettier (glam shots)