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Archive 2015 · Infrared Flooded Meadow in Color (590nm) - High Sierras in winter

  
 
billsamuels
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Infrared Flooded Meadow in Color (590nm) - High Sierras in winter


I took this photo a few weeks ago in the high-Sierras and I'm just now figuring out how to work with Photoshop. I have a Canon Rebel SL1 that I had LifePixel put in their SuperColor filter, so if you've ever worked with this particular filter, you get a super-red picture, which is a two-step process of turning it into something else.

I would greatly appreciate your thoughts. I haven't really been anywhere spectacular yet, but mainly let me know what you think of the processing given the location. I'm hoping to get to Yellowstone this summer, so I'll step-up the quality of the scene, but right now I'm looking for how the processing is on what I had to work with, a flooded meadow in the high Sierras.

Thanks.
Bill







Apr 13, 2015 at 01:01 AM
philkvt
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Infrared Flooded Meadow in Color (590nm) - High Sierras in winter


Bill,

I really like your interpretation of your color IR image.

I'm pleased to see someone put up IR. I don't see many IR images on FM.

I'm an old IR guy--starting with mono IR and some color IR in my film days (both of which were hard to process in my darkroom due to the sensitivity of the film to skin temperature when I handled it, even with cloth gloves).

Then I began doing IR when I got my first digital cameras beginning 2001. My first was a Canon PowerShot G1 using IR filters and then mono IR with a Sony f707 using the nightshot mode and filters. Then I had LifePixel convert a Canon G9 to mono 720nm which was great until I got an urge to try color IR and had a Panasonic GH2 converted to 590nm. After I sold that camera, based on my great satisfaction with the color IR, I had an Olympus E-PL5 converted to 590nm by LifePixel--which is what I use now for IR photography.

I have a number of IR images from trips into Asia and UK in the past two years which I have yet to process in Photoshop. Your interesting picture prompts me to return to those images and make more effort to process them. It is somewhat time-consuming, as you know.

I like your flooded meadow picture. Good tonal interpretation. My only suggestion is for you to consider a crop to remove the bottom foreground area where the beach branches intrude into the image--this draws my eye away from your central lake and background areas. Such a crop would also serve to emphasize some of the lovely magenta tones in the snowy lake foreground and middle ground and put it all into an attractive panorama. Hope this suggestion makes sense.

Thanks for posting this picture. - Phil



Apr 17, 2015 at 09:42 PM
billsamuels
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Infrared Flooded Meadow in Color (590nm) - High Sierras in winter


Hi Phil,

Thanks very much for your thoughts on the photo and for your history with IR. It's great to hear that other people have had a long history with IR and with Lifepixel as well. I was surprised just how much tonal quality came out with this picture. I had Lifepixel convert my Canon SL1 nearly a year ago and this is a 590nm filter as well. The primary reason I chose this filter was that you can go either color, and it's brilliant color if you process it with color, or B&W if you process it as such.

Although I shot the picture with the root in mind (bottom left), I could certainly see your point. I've been observing a lot of FM landscape photos that get everyone's TOP wow's to see both what makes a picture perfect and where they're being taken because I want to spend a couple of weeks this summer taking pictures around the west, both with the new Canon 50MP camera when I am able to get it, and with my IR camera. Do you think with the right processing and the right locations, there might be a market for these pictures? Is it worth getting a Canon 5D M2 or 3 and having it also converted to the 590nm filter to get the higher resolution photos (APC-S vs. full-frame)?

Do you have your pictures (IR) online anywhere? I'd love to see other people's work that have been doing it for a while.

Thanks again Phil.
Bill



Apr 19, 2015 at 12:45 AM
philkvt
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Infrared Flooded Meadow in Color (590nm) - High Sierras in winter


Hi Bill,

You got me started on reviewing some of my IR work. Thank you for that.

First, you asked me some questions about your IR interests.

Your camera is a Canon SL1 in APS-C format with an 18mp sensor that shoots RAW. I don’t think you need another camera to improve your IR photography. You can process your images either as color IR or monochrome IR so you have a lot of flexibility.

Look at two of my Mono IR pictures below—both of which have won awards and were printed to 12x16 size (mounted in 16x20 mattes). The Tuscan hill country shot was made with a Sony Cybershot f707 point & shoot with a 5mp sensor mounting a 720nm IR filter and a ND filter on the lens running at f/2.2 and ISO 100 AND limited to JPG capture. The Vatican hill shot was captured with a Canon PowerShot G9 point & shoot converted to B&W IR 720nm with a 12mp sensor using RAW at f/8, ISO 200.

And don’t worry about a little noise in your IR images. It is usually pretty easy to clean up with software (Lightroom, DxO Optics Pro and other software noise tools). And, for my taste, a little “grain” in an IR image – especially when presented in monochrome – often looks good to my eye. Your mileage may vary here…..

Second, you asked about the market for high-quality IR images. I don’t try to sell my photos so I’m not able to be of much help. Perhaps other FMers who may comment on this thread in the future can offer you good advice. But my sense of photo sales that I run across is that monochrome IR sells better than color IR. I think people react to the unexpected tonalities of color IR with some discomfort, as they do with HDR images that are over-juiced (all just my opinions—obviously).

Also, you asked me if I have pictures online. I have a photo website (www.philipkronenberg.com) with a substantial collection of galleries of my images (especially in the “Favorites” links) but few of those pictures are IR. But you have gotten me focused on IR and I think over the next several weeks I’ll process a number of my IR images and post them in a special gallery on my website. I’ll let you know when I do that. Thanks for asking.

Let me mention that my latest IR-capable camera is an Olympus E-PL5 converted to 590nm (what LifePixel calls “SuperColor”). I sold the Panny GH1 that was my most-previous IR camera because it was too big. When I’m out shooting I like to carry both my primary digital camera as well as the IR-capable camera. That way I can be flexible and opportunistic in the kinds of images I try to capture (obviously, not every scene is attractive in IR). Thus I have this very small and lightweight 16mp E-PL5 hanging around my neck (mounting either a very small and lovely Lumix 14/2.5 lens (efl 28mm) and always easily accessible plus my primary camera on a shoulder strap. Here below are several pictures taken last fall in Scotland and England using the IR-E-PL5. My wife and I stayed several nights in the Cuzean Castle while we were in Scotland—an extraordinary place
.
Finally—let me draw your attention to several IR-related threads available in FM Forums that you may want to look at and contribute to. They are both in the LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY FORUM. One is called “Infrared Photo Thread” and it was started in June 2014—it has been dormant for awhile and I just discovered it and made a contribution. The other is a new thread that I just started called “Film Color Infrared Threat”. I hope it draws in some of the folks who have done film-based IR over the years.

Before I close this very long post, let me mention that I think the best tool for converting your color IR images is Photoshop, using a swap of color channels and level adjustments. You may already know about this but, if not, I’m sending you a copy of the procedure I use for channel swapping in a separate PM.

Do post some more of your IR images. I look forward to seeing them. And you may want to put some of them in other FM Forums. Best regards - Phil

http://www.philipkronenberg.com



Apr 20, 2015 at 01:59 PM
philkvt
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Infrared Flooded Meadow in Color (590nm) - High Sierras in winter


Here are my IR pictures mentioned above.




Tuscan hill country near Montalcino, Italy






Vatican Hill in Rome from the Tiber River






Culzean Castle near Maybole on the Southern Coast of Scotland






Dunollie Castle at Oban, Scotland






Blenheim Palace near Oxford, England -- Birthplace of Winston Churchill




Apr 20, 2015 at 02:04 PM
billsamuels
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Infrared Flooded Meadow in Color (590nm) - High Sierras in winter


Hi Phil,

Thanks for responding. I must have come from a school of putting things in the foreground to make the photo more interesting, but I've heard enough complaints that I guess I should stop doing that. Unfortunately, I don't think I can edit that branch out of the photo without doing serious damage, and the other photo that was taken there also includes that branch.

I do agree that the colors were surprisingly rich and I'm just now learning how to process the images with some degree of accuracy, which is no small task! Thanks for including your images. I have a lot of images where I can't get my computer to provide a blue sky and instead, I get a sky similar to your first color photo, which is more of a green/brown sky. I'm not sure how to change this to blue every time so if anyone knows how to do this, I'd appreciate this greatly!!! Even swapping the color channel doesn't always work though because I still get that sky coloration after swapping the blue and red channels.

The other coloration I really like is that on LifePixel's website, they have been displaying their foliage bright-white and I want to do this as well. There is something to a bright white foliage that is very cool. I had Lifepixel put in the SuperColor filter into my Canon Rebel SL1 which is the camera I use and it's a 590nm filter like your Olympus was converted. The other reason I had the SuperColor filter put in was because you can also use monochrome and get fairly intense black and white photos and I really enjoy that as well. In fact, when I first joined FM, my first Avatar was a personal one I took of an old oak tree that I used Photoshop to look like an IR B&W photo.

I haven't tried it yet, but I'd like to try using a Polarizer filter on the IR camera this summer during thunderstorm season and enhance the clouds and see what affect that has on the clouds when converting the IR photos to B&W. I really like how you were able to turn your foliage to pure white in the first B&W photo above.

Thanks again and if you hear any secrets of converting color foliage to that pure white, I'd love to try it. And thanks for all the links Phil.

Bill




Apr 21, 2015 at 12:09 PM
philkvt
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Infrared Flooded Meadow in Color (590nm) - High Sierras in winter


Bill,

Here below is another hit at the Culzean Castle 590nm image, this time tweaked with Nik Viveza to get the white foliage look that you like. I had spent a little time doing a rerun with the channel swapping of the original image but couldn't get the white foliage and dark blue sky together that would give it a different look--perhaps closer to the Blenheim Palace sky. I tried adjusting the green channel, as well, but it didn't get the result you wanted--So I turned to Viveza....

My thought on all this is to remind myself of the fact that we are capturing the IR spectrum which is heavily mediated by temperature levels. I recall now that the morning at Culzean Castle on the Scottish coast was sunny and clear but quite chilly. And it was rather warm--but sunny and partly cloudy at Blenheim. These temperature variables will make a difference. Added tweaks (such as with plugins and some selective Photoshopping to get a look that is what one wants.

I have never tried to use a polarizer with IR. Interesting idea. Since IR radiation is not visible, it would be fun to give your idea a try.

Perhaps some other FM colleagues who see this thread may have thoughts on getting the results you seek--and also the use of a polarizer (which I plan to try soon...).

Cheers - Phil




Culzean Castle - IR 590nm - Reinterpreted with a Viveza tweak




Apr 21, 2015 at 01:59 PM
billsamuels
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Infrared Flooded Meadow in Color (590nm) - High Sierras in winter


Tomorrow I'm going to run up to Lake Oroville for something I have to do and on the return I think I'll stop at a local cemetary and see what I can grab in the foliage there. I'm also looking to enter the April monthly contest for "creepy" and IR monochrome is great for that, as well as fooling around with some IR color with the same images. What do you mean Phil about Nik Viveza? I'm unsure how you changed it to white foliage?

I got an email from the guy that usually answers calls and email at LifePixel and he gave me a name to contact about this issue. I have Friday off so I may contact his contact about using it.

In the meantime, here are three IR photos that I have managed to process that aren't half-bad.
Bill





Orange Creek







A creek in IR







A purple neighborhood




Apr 22, 2015 at 03:52 PM
philkvt
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Infrared Flooded Meadow in Color (590nm) - High Sierras in winter


Bill,

Thanks for putting up these pictures. They look good--although the green creek and the purple neighborhood are not what one might look for in color IR--they are a bit jarring but YMMV. I really like your interpretation of "Orange Creek"--it has a warm, compelling quality that one cannot find in standard visual color.

The Viveza plugin to PS lets one identify specific sectors of an image to modify brightness, tonality, contrast, saturation and RGB color values etc for similar, adjacent color areas. It's a great tool and that is what I used to bring the white, desaturated tones to the Culzean Castle image above.

Please send me a PM with any insights re or about the contact info for the person that the LifePixel rep suggested.

Also, tell me more about the "creepy stuff" contest--I have some interesting cemetery images that might get a hit at such venues

Best - Phil



Apr 22, 2015 at 04:30 PM





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