Framedlight

Not too far from where I live lie 3 corrugated iron barns, snuggled up close to each other and gradually sinking into dilapidation. In fact the third has been almost totally submerged by brambles. Every so often I have a go at photographing them and I have had a yen to try out some blends of colour shots and infrared shots. The day was quite dramatic and while  I was there the clouds rolled in followed by a thunderstorm. As I was leaving it started to rain torrentially. Needless to say under such conditions there was some gusting wind which affected the longer exposure infrared shots. I photographed the barns with and without a 650nm infrared filter on the front. The filter is from Japan and I don't think of particularly good quality, unlike the Hoya 720nm one I have. As the light was from behind the barn I bracketed my exposures so that I could make an HDR image or blend the exposures in photoshop if I needed to. I made a gentle HDR conversion of the first image which was not t...

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.

Feeling a little stale I had ordered an infrared filter which arrived while I was away in Wales. I thought it was not possible to take infrared photographs with modern DSLRs as they have a filter in them which takes out most of the infrared light. However I had seen some forum postings saying that you can achieve something, although you need super long exposure times. The filter I bought was sent from a company called Luxan in Germany - it is only a cheapish one as these can be very expensive and I wanted to see what I could get without shelling out a lot of money. It is 870nm (the end of the visible spectrum of light is around 700nm) which is pretty hefty and cuts out at least 10 stops of light. My first outing was to Audley End House. It was a very dull day, which was a mistake as I was getting exposure times of 6 minutes at f/13 and ISO 1600. When I looked at the pictures they all had a very bright spot on them. Consulting the internet I found that it was because I was using a Nik...