Poinsettia

[Andrea B.]

OK, here we go.

 

First the set-up I'm using.

 

 

From left to right, first row.

Battery pack for Dr. Klaus Nichia 365 UV-LED Kit.

Controller module for same.

External collimator tube and two inner tubes, one a Nichia 365nm UV-LED and the other a visible LED.

Microphone holder which fits into camera hot shoe. The tube fits into this.

Just under the holder: 1.25" Baader-U filter with diffusion coating.

Second row.

Goggles against UV.

Filters, labeled.

Stack of 4 Baader UVIR-Cut filters.

Nichia 385 UV-LED in titanium Haiku case by MacLeish (top).

Nichia 365 UV-LED in titanium Haiku case by MacLeish (bottom).

 

The poinsettia when it still had flowers.

Mounted Dr. Klaus Nichia 365 UV-LED.

Nikon D600-broadband.

Zeiss 60mm f/4 UV-Planar on helicoid.

Really Right Stuff ground pod.

In the background to the right is the box of reflective standards and the CCPassport.

[Damon]

You may have heard my oohs and ahhs from digesting your setup. You are apparently way more organized than I am :)

So that controller enables you to adjust the intensity of the LED? You have 2 filters in front of the camera?

Just out of curiosity--why not use a standard lens to avoid filters? I am thinking your answer will be--purist will want to block everything unwanted to be sure & the Zeiss lens blows away any other standard lens you have.

 

I really appreciate you taking the time to show me all this!

 

Spring peepers (frogs) are calling outside my house--peepers in late December...geez!

 

-D

[Andrea B.]

Visible Poinsettia with Flowers

D600-broadband + Zeiss 60mm f/4 UV-Planar + Baader UVIR-Cut Filter + Visible LED

f/11 for 1/2" @ ISO-100 in ambient room light.

 

Unstacked, front flowers in focus.

 

Unstacked, back flowers in focus.

 

White balance determination under the Visible LED illumination in ambient light.

 

Colour profile made in Photo Ninja for the Visible LED illumination in ambient light.

 

Visible Poinsettia after Flower Drop

D600-broadband + Zeiss 60mm f/4 UV-Planar + Baader UVIR-Cut Filter + Visible LED

f/11 for 5" @ ISO-100 in darkness.

 

Unstacked, focus on only flower.

There is one little flower stuggling to hang on.

 

White balance determination under the Visible LED illumination in darkness.

 

Colour profile made in Photo Ninja for the Visible LED illumination in darkness.

[Andrea B.]

Spoon test to check for Visible light leakage with Nichia 365nm UV-LED.

There was a stack of four (4) Baader UVIR-Cut filters on the UV-Planar.

 

When unfiltered the Nichia 365 UV-LED leaks visible violet through 4 Baader UVIR-Cut filters.

This is the best approximation of the colour I could manage. It is very close.

D600-broadband + Zeiss 60mm f/4 UV-Planar + four (4) Baader UVIR-Cut Filters

Nichia 365nm UV-LED, Unfiltered

f/4 for 1.6" @ ISO-400

 

When filtered with a 1.25" Baader-U diffuser filter, the Nichia 365nm UV-LED leaks very much less

visible violet through the stack of Baader UVIR-Cut filters.

D600-broadband + Zeiss 60mm f/4 UV-Planar + four (4) Baader UVIR-Cut Filters

Nichia 365nm UV-LED + 1.25" Baader-U with Diffusion Coating

f/4 for 1.3" @ ISO-400

[Andrea B.]

Note: The visible colour in these fluorescence photographs was adjusted in the editor to match what was seen during the shoot, but the colour may not be entirely accurate.

 

Nichia 365nm UV-LED Induced Visible Fluorescence under 1.25" Baader-U Filter with Diffusion Coating

Nikon D600-broadband + Zeiss 60mm f/4 UV-Planar + four (4) Baader UVIR-Cut Filters

f/16 for 15" @ ISO-100 in Darkness

The Poinsettia bracts are dark red when using proper filtration to stop most of the visible violet leak.

 

Nichia 365nm UV-LED Induced Visible Fluorescence, Unfiltered

Nikon D600-broadband + Zeiss 60mm f/4 UV-Planar + four (4) Baader UVIR-Cut Filters

f/16 for 15" @ ISO-100 in Darkness

The Poinsettia bracts are deep magenta under the unfiltered UV-Led which leaks some visible violet.

 

 

Nichia 365nm UV-LED Ultraviolet

Nikon D600-broadband + Zeiss 60mm f/4 UV-Planar + Baader-U UV-Pass Filter

f/16 for 5" @ ISO-400 in Darkness

This tends towards a monochrome look. I pulled up the saturation on the hint of blue in the center to make it stronger.

[Damon]

Poinsettia Leaves fluorescence comparisons

 

Below are some quick pics of the visible and UVIVFL shots regarding the red and white variety. They are unedited aside from WB. You can see that the green leaves do look a little different under fluorescence. Although there are also "between" leaves that are partially white/green (of course!). Are these leaves or bracts? I tried to zoom in on those hairs with everything I got--including a +4 single lens canon diopter on the end of my 5X macro which already had all 93 mm of extension tubes! :)

 

Apparently, undetectable by me, the leaf I had cut & clamped to my stand was slowly dying/wilting. I simply could not get a acceptable image--even though through the view finder it looked really cool (albeit dim). I am going to try this again later with a leaf that is still growing on the plant.

 

 

Visible: Canon 30D Unmodified, Canon EF100mm f/2.8 Macro USM , Halogen light, 1/25 s @ f/8 ISO 400, No Filters.

 

 

UVIVFL: Canon 30D Unmodified, EF100mm f/2.8 Macro USM, 3 Blak-Rays B-100AP, 2.5 s @ f/11 ISO 400, No Filters.

 

 

Diptych

 

 

 

Wider angle pics of plant in general for comparison UVIVFL & Visible

If you desire camera info. I can supply it. These are literally grab camera and quick snap.

 

White variety visible

 

White variety UVIVFL

 

 

 

Red variety visible

 

Red variety UVIVFL

 

 

 

Underside of White Variety

 

 

-D

[Damon]

Sorry I didn't mean to hijack in the middle of your thread. I will stop posting.

 

-D

[Andrea B.]

No prob Damon, I "saved space".

[Damon]

Great! So glad you went forward with it.

So it looks like it doesn't have much of what would stand out as a UV reflectance/absorption signature. It is darker towards the center I suppose. If I was flying over that and that was indeed what I saw, I would tend to gravitate towards the center.

Didn't think of trying that UV. Well there is an immediate benefit to the Zeiss. :)

 

In the unfiltered shot where there you suspect there is leakage, the dots (likely man-made fibers) that have been fluorescing blue for me are not doing that there. And when you stopped the violet leak, the blue dots show up. I also have blue dots and my leaves are pretty close to the color of yours in the no leak photo.

 

Clearly my observations are just that--observations and not very technical. But sometimes, seeing something establishes at least an approximation of what really is there.

 

I am happy to see what I have been shooting is similar to what you have just shown. Don't you think?

I do understand that nobody reeaaly knows what other creatures are seeing/detecting but it is nice to see some similarities in our results.

 

-D

[Andrea B.]

So that controller enables you to adjust the intensity of the LED?

Yes. But for UVIVF work when I'm sitting in the dark coat closet , I almost always turn the UV-LED controller up to full strength.

 

You have 2 filters in front of the camera?

Not in the set-up shown for the first set of Visibles (two photos shown above when Poinsettia had flowers). There is just one Baader UVIR-Cut filter. There are two step rings - one for the filter and one for the lens. All my UV-capable lenses are kitted up or down to female 52mm. Similarly all my filters to male 52mm. Then it is always easy to set up lens + filter.

 

When I was shooting the second set of Vis and the Fluor (after the Poinsettia lost most of its flowers), I used a stack of 4 Baader UVIR-Cut filters. Really that was kind of silly, but I was wanting to make sure nothing but Vis got through to the sensor.

 

Just out of curiosity--why not use a standard lens to avoid filters?

I am thinking your answer will be--purist will want to block everything unwanted to be sure.

I wanted primarily to shoot a UV of the Poinsettia. So I made the Visibles and Fluors with the same gear, because I was just plain too lazy to set up the unmodded Df (or D810) with the Micro-Nikkor. Now you will think badly of me !! :)

 

But it is my habit and preference to always filter the lens and to always filter the UV illumination for UVIVF regardless of whether I'm using modded or unmodded camera. The filtration may not be perfect, but it goes a long ways towards the goal of UV-only illumination and Visible-only recording - give or take a few nanometers at the endpoints.

 

I am happy to see what I have been shooting is similar to what you have just shown. Don't you think?

Yes, they are similar in UVIVF - dark red bracts, almost white "scars" where the flowers fall off, greenish-cyan stems, yellow to yellow-green pollen.

The Nichia 365nm UV-LED may have a narrower bandwidth around its 365nm peak than your Blak-Ray lamp?

 

I have a lot of trouble with the colour in my UVIVF fotos. I can't figure out how to white balance it. So I correct the colour "by hand" as best I can.

 

P.S. I can't believe you are hearing the Spring Peepers !! That is just crazy. This warming thing is getting scary. It was 62°F here this afternoon.

[colinbm]

More great images from Andrea & Damon.

I will add my take, with a visible light shot of the female part, that has exploded forthwith.

The 'bulbous green thing', the female part of the flower, has risen, upright & exploded into shape, above the male flower.

 

Cheers

Col

 

Poinsettia Flower, showing the opened female flower, in visible light, with CFL lamp.

Taken with a Sigma SD15 dSLR with the included IRC filter. The lens is a Sigma 105mm macro lens at 1:1.5 magnification.

6 stacked photo images were used. My year license has expired, so the watermark is applied automatically.

 

Here is another Poinsettia Flower with a female flower, erect & ready to open.

 

Poinsettia Flower II, showing the female flower ready to open, in visible light, with CFL lamp.

Taken with a Sigma SD15 dSLR with the included IRC filter. The lens is a Sigma 105mm macro lens at 1:3 magnification.

7 stacked photo images were used. My year license has expired, so the watermark is applied automatically.

 

I have left the flower & camera in situ, so I can show this flowers progress, tomorrow.

Col

[Andrea B.]

By golly Colly --- that is awesome that your Poinsettia has all those busty female flowers just waiting to pop open. Quite amazin' !!!!

We are all learning so much. :D But you gotta be careful 'cause this Botany thing becomes addictive. :P ;) B)

[Andrea B.]

My Poinsettia wishes your Poinsettias a Happy Solstice Day - and Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it.

This is a little abstraction from my tiny Pentax Q.

 

[colinbm]

Thanks Andrea

These Poinsettia flowers are very unusual & interesting, once you get to know them.

They would make a fascinating time-laps study.

 

I enjoyed my Christmas & I hope you enjoy yours too.

Cheers

Col

[colinbm]

Twelve hours later, the Poinsettia II, above has opened its male stamen & I am starting to see some nectar in the nectar glands.

Col

 

 

Poinsettia Flower III, showing the male flowers have opened & some nectar in the nectar gland, in visible light, with CFL lamp.

Taken with a Sigma SD15 dSLR with the included IRC filter. The lens is a Sigma 105mm macro lens at 1:3 magnification.

8 stacked photo images were used.

[Damon]

This is great!

Andrea:

Re: I wanted primarily to shoot a UV of the Poinsettia. So I made the Visibles and Fluors with the same gear, because I was just plain too lazy to set up the unmodded Df (or D810) with the Micro-Nikkor. Now you will think badly of me !!

​--I did think badly of you but it was short lived as your honesty superseded those thoughts and you are back in my "utmost respect" scale so no worries! :D

 

Re: The Nichia 365nm UV-LED may have a narrower bandwidth around its 365nm peak than your Blak-Ray lamp?

--I don't know what this means and how it might make a difference in our pictures. Can you give me a quick off the cuff explanation? You have already done a lot of work here so you don't have to go nuts.

 

Re: I have a lot of trouble with the colour in my UVIVF fotos. I can't figure out how to white balance it.

--Well, I can tell you this: When I try to White Balance my UVIVFL photos in camera sometimes they lose much of the cool fluorescence so I stopped doing that and left it at auto with the 30D, which I think was ~5200. I need to look at it (the number) again though to be sure. So here is what I did to test my method/madness-when there was a really white thing in the photo under UVIVFL, I single clicked WB using Ninja/ACDSee and confirmed that auto WB has worked. Whaaat?

 

A quick explanation: First, I am a fish out of water here and my lungs are not fully evoluted yet.

After realizing that yelling at software slows progress--here is how my Piney brain works:

 

Ex. I take a UVIVFL pic of the little Poinsettia flowers in auto WB. Open it in either/both Ninja/ACDsee and one click white balance using the milky sap areas of the photo (which I do actually know is white in reality) and nothing or very very very little changes in the photo.

So I figure that it is White Balancing correctly. Smart people reading this are no doubt cringing and showing teeth at this method and I have a feeling my Neanderthal approach to this problem is sketchy to say the least but it has proven to be repeatable and show the same results time and time again with every UVIVFL photo I have tried it on since I thought of it--so I go with it. Feel free to beat me up on this technique but I could not come up with a better way and I don't have fancy passport chart things.

 

 

Col--

That is totally awesome that you have been following it! I can't get those female flowers/parts yet. Thanks so much for labeling. I think I am going to just cross pollinate my plants manually if I can.

 

You show a female flower opened in poinsettia I. So this is a female flower that is not fertilized or open and now ready to be fertilized? I don't see the fat bulb thing related to the female part here. So that fat bulb kinda goes away when the female flower emerges fully?

What a tricky little plant. It is supposed to be a primitive simple design. ;)

 

Happy to here you both had a nice Xmas.

 

-D

[colinbm]

Thanks Damon, I am just enjoying the ride here & I just happen to have a couple of 'wild' Poinsettia's pop-up out of the ground, the last two years.

I am not a gardener nor a botanist & lastly a photographer, but I do like to experiment with photography.

Now, WTF is a Neanderthal...........?

None of this software you mention is compatible with Sigma Foveon cameras, so I just use the native RAW processing.

As for naming the plant parts, I have been guided by Andrea & Bjorn & reading the net & been fascinated enough to place them here.

Cheers

Col

[colinbm]

Another 10 hours later things changed & I captured the seed pod explode & eject the seeds. It was just a lucky catch.

Here is the 6 image stack that recorded this event, in UVIVF. The first 4 frames had the complete pod, the next showed the pod & the remains in the one frame & the last frame just had the remaining core.

Cheers

Col

 

 

Poinsettia Flower in UVIVF 6 focus stacks, showing the seed pod (top) before & after the three seeds were released. The light cyan coloured part is the remaining core.

Approx 600 watt of mixed UVA lighting, to induce the fluorescence.

Camera, Sigma SD15 dSLR with internal IRC, 100 ISO, f11, 25 seconds, 105mm Macro lens at close to 1:1 magnification.

 

 

 

Poinsettia Flower, Seed & Seed Pod Segments, 1:1

[Damon]

Ha! That is great! Nice Job.

Who says a watched pot never boils...

 

That thing is of course pretty strange looking. I hope I get such a chance.

 

-D

[Andrea B.]

This is just the best thread ever !!

 

Col, what a catch !! Terrific and amazing !!!! Good for you being patient and watching that boiling pot !!!

 

**********************

 

To follow up on Damon's white balance discussion:

 

Auto white balance is hit or miss, not a sure thing. As I understand it, if there is some area reasonably neutral somewhere in the foto, auto white balance will attempt to use that. Auto white balance may also perform some "averaging" over several areas in the foto. All the algorithms and rules used for white balance are proprietary to the brand and/or the model of camera being used. Although there are only so many ways such rules can work, and most cameras give fairly similar results.

 

ADDED 2014 Jan 6

I should have mentioned that some newer digicams attempt to set auto white balance by reading the ambient light temperature via a sensor.

 

If you do not have some reasonably neutral area somewhere in the scene, then auto white balance will not work well. It is notoriously difficult, for example, to obtain a good auto white balance under incandescent light bulbs or in settings such as sports arenas where there is mixed fluorescent/sodium/incandescent lighting. Here is a good example - Christmas tree ornaments with different coloured lights on the tree. Under auto white balance everything is reddish. Using a click-white tool on some neutral glitter on the red ornament, a better balance is achieved.

 

 

Our poinsettia fluor fotos are reasonably white balanced if the latex scars or sap is used as you are doing. It is pretty close to white under the UV-LEDs. Might be tending just a bit towards cyan, but it is as close as we are likely to get.

 

What we must do: Find something to use in as a white balance area in fluor fotos. Ideally it won't be a vial of latex poinsettia sap. Perhaps something more durable over the long term. "-)

 

BTW, the CCPassport isn't useful under UV-LED.

[Damon]

Yeah it is tricky. Thanks for the ex.

It was part of why I desired to get some commonality within Fluorescence. There are quite a few things like plain ole paper that fluoresce almost universally but I will begin looking into the idea. I mean, the whole other spectrum deal outside our vision has some subjectivity to it regardless. If everyone was shooting with my camera and lens setup then we could potentially get a standard over time. I am not taking pictures of crime scenes that will be used in court.

 

Brown eggs for ex. look red or reddish under 365. There have been a few different camera and UV lights that all show that. So there is potential if we know the lighting is at least the same. ie 365nm.

But to what end? It become challenging to tell someone a pic is not "supposed to look like that" but you can't tell them what it is "supposed to look like". I am sure there are lots of people who think the Mona Lisa stinks.

 

I am happy taking pics of fluorescing stuff and calling it a day. But I am also interested in delving deeper into tech details but only if there is at least someone else who thinks it has value.

 

Since I don't own one---it's good to hear the passport isn't useful-- :D

 

--D

[Damon]

If I can I want to try some super closeups tomorrow evening.

 

-D

[Andrea B.]

We should be able to reproduce in our photos exactly what we see for visible fluorescense under UV. Because it's visible . And correctly coloured visible fluorescence photos have legitimate scientific value because they are conveying real colour information. So a solid technique for white balance which gives reproducible results is a worthy goal.

 

Currently I have to finagle colour curves and/or colour wheels in the editor to colour correct my visible fluorescense photos.

(Or make lucky clicks on poinsettia sap with a click-white tool.)

 

oh my it's late and i can't spell that fluor word.

[colinbm]

I thought you were already doing super up close !

Col

[colinbm]

My view with the Sigmas with UVIVF, is that different parts of the image need different WB.......

Col