Framedlight

Still going with the infrared theme, I visited Chartwell a little while ago while Alan was riding in a London cycle event. I could have wished for better light as it was overcast and dull and I could not go in the house as I had the Hettie dog with me. The following are taken using the Nikon D800e and the 24mm PCE lens. I rather like mixing the monochrome and the colour together to give muted tones and a degree of blur where the foliage has moved in the wind during the infrared shot. For comparison I am posting the infrared images, converted to black and white and the combined monotone and colour ones.

I have bought three infrared filters, of different wavelengths for my camera and as most of my lenses on the Nikon camera are 77mm it is fairly easy to use the filters on any of them. With the zoom lenses I get a hotspot in the centre of the picture, as I have found with the Fuji XE-1 system where I only have the 18-55mm zoom lens. Fuji lenses are really expensive and I would like to add some primes but am reluctant to buy in fully to two systems. If I went travelling again I might consider it as there is such an advantage to a small camera if you are trekking. The first 4 pictures are infrared with a 720mm filter using the Fuji and minimising the hotspot in Lightroom. They are of Arkesden church and my house. The last 3 are using the Nikon with again a 720nm filter and my 24mm tilt shift lens which is manual and leaves no hotspot whatsoever. They are a combination of IR and colour images, produced in Photoshop and just of the local countryside.

I was lucky enough to get a tilt shift lens for Christmas. I have a Nikon system and for some reason Nikon supplies the lens with the tilt and shift aligned at 90°. The lens needs to be sent back to Nikon who, for the princely sum of £160 will re-align it so that the tilt and shift are in the same plane. I read that I was supposed to do this in order to get the lens to work properly for landscape photography, although my idea as to why was shaky. Now I have the lens back it makes a little more sense, but I will have to do a lot of work in order to use it correctly. The main problem using the lens with the D800 is that the locking knob for the shift, when the lens has been rotated (the front of the lens can be rotated in relation to the back of the lens), lies directly under the popup flash which makes it difficult to adjust. Fortunately I have fairly small hands. I would strongly advise not to use this lens when out with a non photographer as they will get really, really impatient. ...

I took the dog and the camera for a walk in Wandlebury on the outskirts of Cambridge - a piece of natural woodland surrounding an 18th century house (now turned into residences). I am still experimenting with the 24mm tilt shift lens so the following are taken with that. The first was taken at f/3.5, the third at f/16 and the other two at f/8. It was fairly dark in the woods so I used a tripod.