Pintoids!

For a change, these are not infrared but pinhole photographs taken with a can of Altoids, about five years ago. Combination of Pinhole and Altoids = Pintoids. They are fun to work with, although you need a dark room to load, unload and process the negatives. The pictures here are scans from the negatives after being inverted.

Part of Deb's yard a couple of houses ago:

From the entrance to the apartment where I used to live:

Part of Deb's yard and the front of her van:

And just more yard:

I haven't processed film for several years now, but just looking at them makes me want to do it again. Maybe this summer ....

What do you get when do mix...

.. an Infrared-converted camera and a fisheye lens???


The answer is .... more fun!

These are just a couple of shots that I took outside of my house to test the new lens... Lots of possibilities...

First, from one of the windows of my house, after some processing

And some more different processing.

Straight out of the camera.

From the yard, close to ground level, with a channel swap:

Changing only one channel?

Straight from the camera:

The lake

On a lake, summertime. Same image, just with a channel swap difference betwween them. This one only has the trees looking surreal; the water and sky could have been this color that well, although they were not.

In this one below, it all looks more surreal. Somehow I like a bit better this stronger effect... Would you swim in this lake?

One of my favorites

Same day, same place, same picture now three different approaches to false color processing. Not sure which one I like the most, maybe all the three the same. After all, I did like six or seven different processing techniques. I was not too happy with any of the B&W renditions though.

Somehow I tend to like the blue hues though.

Maybe more realistic?

Same scene, false color

These pictures come from different processing, all of them, including the B&W from the last post, from the same original picture.

This one below is somehow my favorite from this batch; I especially like the similar but different tones of the path on the ground and the grassy area around.

The more surreal colors in the one below make it also attractive, although it is somewhat similar to the duotone from the previous post.

A different processing technique, although it does not have enough punch for my taste.

Between the color and the B&W renditions, I would take the B&W for this particular picture as my favorite.

New camera, new pictures

These new pictures have been taken with a new Nikon D-60 modified by Life Pixel using their Enhance Color filter after removing the standard IR filter. I have to say that I am more pleased with these results than the pictures that I got from my older D-40 although I believe a good part of the problem was the inability of the D-40 to modify the white balance in a controlled way.

All these five images are the result of monochrome processing from the same picture. The one below is the result of a direct grayscale conversion.

These two images come from discarding a color channel or adjusting the channel mixer for a monochrome output:

A sepia filter in the monochrome image gave me this result:

And playing with doutones for the same monochrome image gave me this one:

It is hard to say which one I like the best. Also, because of the Enhance color filter, the results do not seem too spectaular in B&W images. Maybe the light in the scene didn't help too much either. But the duotone, the last one, seems to be the one I like the most from this set. Next time, some color processing from the same picture.

From the lighthouse, in black and white

The trip to Cape May, NJ did not result in the best infrared light, especially for false color images. I did manage, however, to get some decent pictures when converted to black and white. All these are taken from the lighthouse.

The green color in the leaves has a strong IR reflection, making the trees to appear almost white.

The beach and the sand...

More trees in a picture with the hotspots typical from some IR images.

Not a good Infrarred Day

Cape May, NJ. 5/2008

Not all days are good for shooting in Infrarred. The experts say that the days or the times that seem to be good for regular photography are not good for Infrarred photography. My problem is that I still don't know what is a good day for regular photography, let alone infrared. And besides, when you find yourself at a place, with your infrared camera, you better start shooting it. Just in case...

So that was not a good day for IR photography. Looking back, the sun was bright, there were no clouds and the lighthouse at Cape May did not reflect much IR right. The tree leaves did some, but overall, all the pictures had a strong color cast.

After some processing, mostly adjusting the neutral tones, this is what I get:

Changing it a little bit, gives me this one. Nothing too different, just the cast is a bit different.

Or with choosing a different point as my neutral one:

They were all basically the same color distribution, just a different cast. The one below is applying a sepia filter after converting to black and white IR:

And finally just a regular B&W:

So nothing to be too excited about as far as IR photography goes.

Playing with White Balance

Or better, I should say playing with the neutral point as part of the post processing after an IR shot. The fist picture being B&W does not require this type of adjustment, but I just showed it for comparison.

Now, when we start venturing into the land of false color things can be a bit more complex. After all, we do not see infrared, so any color information is not real. Pretty much we choose what we like or what we find appealing.

It is all about choosing some pixels and deciding that those pixels will be the neutral reference based on our preferences.

All these three false color pictures have color information very similar to one another. Depending on the pixels that we choose the results may be totally useless. These are just three modes of pictures that I found acceptable.

Despite the overall change of color cast there are some colors that remain unchanged. At the very end, the color is not there so your choice is as good as mine.

More water, serenity and tranquility

All these pictures are from the same place as the last post. They come from experimenting with several conversions to false color, especially setting up the white balance. We'll see how it goes later, when I have more control over the white balance when taking the picture. I have some other IR taken in RAW, but I still need to learn how to deal with that. One of these days. Meanwhile, some others that I like.

I like this one below. The white of the trees always seems very appealing.

More water and trees.

And a place to sit down, relax and contemplate what is around us.