Photo of the Week 2020-08-24

Another weekend, another weekend hike with Jordan. This time, we hiked in Forks of the Credit Provincial Park and headed for the mill ruins at Cataract Falls.

Unfortunately, the trail past the ruins and viewing platform have been closed and well fenced-off while replacement of the platform is under consideration. Not to be thwarted in our attempts to get a view of the ruins and falls, we followed the trail to the north side of the river and turned onto the Elora-Cataract Trailway and found a path down the upper slope of the gorge to the rail line and crossed to a fenced location where we could overlook the ruins and river with a view upstream.

 

Credit River Upstream at Cataract Falls

 

 

 

Canon EOS M - Kolari Dual Spectrum (IR & vis) Conversion

Canon EF-M 11-22 f/4-5.6 IS STM @ f/8

Kolari 590nm Filter

1/100 s, ISO 100

 

It was 5 years since I had last visited and 10 or 15 since I first visited. Sadly, the increased foot traffic and use of the park over that time has changed it's character ... not for the better. Like many parks and trails that see overuse, footpaths are well worn but the infuriating signs of disrespectful visitors, ignorant of their impact, were far too numerous. Discarded used diapers, food containers, dozens of empty water bottles, tissue and toilet paper were to be found in the trailside bushes ... without having to look very hard :-(

 

DJE

Photo of the Week 2017-02-13

With a camera newly converted for infrared photography, I set out in the freshly fallen snow on a favourite trail ...

winter wonderland

Back at the cottage after a refreshing hike with 30cm of snow blanketing everything around, I sat down at the computer to process some very red & white exposures and this was one result. 

I was uncertain of exactly what to expect when shooting infrared (IR) for colour images in winter, even more so with the conversion I had selected for this particular camera (more on that in a moment). In the past when I've shot IR it was with the intention of creating final B&W images during spring and summer where the result renders greenery (trees & grass) as white, producing a very surreal look.

For this outing, my goal was to shoot and process for false colour images knowing that there would be a learning curve with post processing. Kolari Vision made getting started easy thanks to their free false colour actions for Photoshop. Fast forward a couple of hours, some red & blue channel swapping, a little NIK Color Efex Pro 4 and you have the surreal image above where the evergreens are turned a light red.

Background (a bit of the geek stuff, for those interested and wit a little understanding of IR photography):

I had a couple of EOS M mirrorless bodies that I've been wanting to convert to IR. Their compact size makes them ideal to take along in addition to my regular gear. They allow me to use the native EOS EF-M lenses, 11-22, 22 & 18-55 or I can pack the EF - EF-M adapter (also compact) and use any of my regular Canon and Sigma glass. Either way, there won't be a lot of extra weight or volume to pack and carry along.

There are benefits to converting mirrorless cameras over DSLRs for IR. Mirrorless cameras that focus directly off the sensor eliminate the need to have a DSLR camera's separate auto-focus system calibrated to IR wavelength and ... since mirrorless cameras use either live view or electronic viewfinders reading right from the sensor, you see exactly the exposure and colour rendition that will be recorded, rather than having to look through a darkened viewfinder and guess at the result.

For this first camera conversion I used Kolari Vision because they offer a "two-spectrum" conversion, leaving the image sensor sensitive to both infrared & visible light. This allows for shooting handheld with a variety of IR filters to achieve different results. Along with the conversion, I ordered 590nm & 850nm filters for false colour and high contrast B&W images respectively. This will give me a good start and I can always get additional filters and/or convert the second body once I have more experience working in IR.

For those who need to know more about IR photography and camera comversions, you can read about the "two-spectrum" conversion on Kolari Vision's website here or delve more deeply into the realm if IR photography from their main page.

I can see that this is going to be fun ...

DJE

Photo of the Week 2014-12-01

It was BLAH weather at the cottage this weekend and I needed something a little different to stir the creative juices. I've been thinking about converting my Canon EOS M for infrared (IR) photography and decided to give it a whirl with some IR filters to see how it handled. Dull overcast days are not a good time to work with IR but hey, I needed to play around.

There's this little scene at the side of our cottage road that speaks to me every time I pass by so I decided to set up there for this little trial.

The first thing I experienced was extraordinarily long shutter speeds. I already know that using a non-converted camera with IR filters on the lens will require long shutter speeds in the range of 15-30 seconds to overcome the internal IR cut filter. But wow ... with the dull, overcast day and starting first with an 850nm filter I was 4 minutes f/5.6 ISO 3200 and I found lack sharpness to be an issue. I think it was mostly a focus shift issue and not being able to determine how much focus shift adjustment was required or at least not taking enough 4 minute exposures to get the right focus by trial and error. Now the 850nm filter really blocks a lot of light only allowing the longer wavelength IR to pass so I dropped down to the 720nm filter which would let in a smidgen more light overall.

With the 720nm filter, I still required a 2 minute exposure with f/5.6, ISO 1600 so the blustery wind played havoc with my subject, moving the spruce and cedar branches causing them to blur, but it can be an nice effect so I carried on and ended up with something interesting ... I think.

I R Spruce Out of Rock

Working with an IR converted camera can be a lot more convenient depending on the particular camera type and features. A converted EOS M will show me the IR image on it's live view screen and should be able to focus without a recalibration since it uses the actual imaging sensor to focus, unlike my DSLR's which use a separate focus sensor. The "M" is also a nice compact package that will be easy to include in my kit along with the adapter that allows it to use all my EF mount lenses :-D

Now the only questions are which IR range to I get it converted to and which conversion service do I use .... hmmmmmm

DJE