Infrared Photography - Day 2 - "Dreamland".

Today I went out with the soul goal of taking infrared landscapes. Unfortunately right at the start of my shoot I dropped my infrared filter on the ground and broke the glass. That just goes to show you how careful you have to be when handling your equipment. I did however manage to get a pretty nice waterfront landscape before I broke my filter. Out of all the infrared shot's i've taken so far this is my favorite. 

 

"Dreamland"

ISO - 100

50MM

F/11

Shutter Speed - 40 sec

It's going to be a while before I can take more infrared shots. Im going to have to buy another filter, but hopefully I will be able to go out on another shoot and further perfect my technique. In the meantime im going to link a few other images just because I can.

The following image is another infrared test I took yesterday. I was just trying to see if I could get the post production process right. I think I was successful. 

The final image im going to link to is just an image of some flowers I took after I broke my filter. Even though it's not infrared I still thought it was worth sharing. 

 

"Escape"

Infrared Photography - Day 1 - Test 1 - 4/29/15

Over the past few day's I've had an urge to try out Infrared Photography. So I purchased an IR filter for my lens. What you are about to see is the result of my first few hours messing around with this technique. I wasn't going for anything special in these shots. I was just trying to see if I could get a useable image. 

It turned out to be a little more difficult than I expected. For example I tried opening up to f1.8 attempting to get a faster shutter speed, as it turns out that is a really bad idea. Every shot I took at f1.8 f2.8 etc was loosing a ton of data. It seams as if this filter reduces sharpness by a considerable amount. As a result all of my shots with a wide aperture were completely unusable. However my shots at f11 worked out just fine. 

The shots below are the finished product from today's test shoot. Hopefully next week I will be able to go out and shoot some killer infrared landscapes. 

 

Test Shot #1:

ISO - 100

Focal length - 50mm

F/11

Shutter Speed - 30 sec

 

Test Shot #2

ISO - 200

Focal Length - 50mm

F/11

Shutter Speed - 20 sec

[Photo's] 4/14/15 More 35mm Film Photos.

I decided to scan the remaining film images that I have yet to scan. These were originally taken in the fall of 2014, I just never got around to scanning them. The first image is just a typical shot of some shoes. The last two shots however, are an experiment with a few darkroom techniques. 

I was attempting to see what would happen if I layered two negatives on top of one another during the enlargement process. In order to make things interesting I looked through a box of poorly developed negatives, and found one that looked like it was damaged in the development process. I than layered that on top of a rather boring yet properly developed shot, and this happened. 

[Project] Scan Film Negatives With A DSLR. (WIP)

After developing a love for taking photos on film I have been looking for a way to save my images to my computer. Unfortunately I currently do not have the money required to buy a decent scanner, therefore I have been forced to use alternative methods to digitize my images. 

I have talked briefly about using a DSLR to scan photo prints, and overall I have been quite happy with this method. Currently all of the film images on this website have been scanned with this method. 

I decided I wanted to try and skip the whole printing process entirely. And so I asked the question, is it possible to use a DSLR to scan film negatives directly? The answer is yes, and no. While it is possible, my current setup does not deliver great results. 

Below are the results of my first test. They are both scans of the same negative, however they both look completely different. This just goes to show how sensitive this process can get. 

 

Image Test #1

 

Image Test #2

As you can see, the images have kind of an old retro photograph look to them. Not that that's a bad thing or anything, but they are pretty bad compared to the original print. 

 

Original Print. Printed on Ilford paper and scanned with a DSLR. 

I feel as if most of the trouble has to do with how I was preforming the scans. 

My setup for this project was simply putting the negative in between a plastic CD case and holding it up to a light box while I took the picture. In theory this should work, the only problem is that I did not have an adequate lens to capture enough detail from the negative. Ideally a macro lens would be the best fit for this type of work, and unfortunately I do not have one. Instead I had to make do with using my 18-55mm kit lens, and my 75-300mm zoom lens. Both of which did not deliver acceptable results. 

Even though this was a failed attempt it still delivered some really cool results. I am still happy with the two test images I got out of it, they just don't seem to fit this particular image. Im sure I can think of a theme that would suit this style perfectly, but until then I will just consider other means for importing my images. 

Just for fun ill post the original RAW file below so that you can see what I had to work with. Ill also post the original cropped negative with the colors reversed so that you can see how far I went in terms of post processing. 

 

Original RAW File. 

 

Original Positive Without Any Post Processing. 

As you can see it's just not worth it to use this method, at least with my current equipment. At this point it's probably cheaper just to buy a scanner that's built for this rather than trying to do it myself. 

Thank you for reading. Let me know if anyone has had any better results. 

-Nick