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UltravioletPhotography

Nikon D70S for UV use


jknights

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I have a Nikon D70S that I believe is good for UV photography.

I have my filter and lens setup as described in this thread.

 

http://www.ultravioletphotography.com/content/index.php/topic/1664-how-do-i-fit-the-filter-to-the-lens/page__st__20

 

The questions as I start to shoot in UV spectrum are:

 

Exposure

What sort of exposure settings (ISO, Aperture, Shutter speed) should I be expecting to use on the D70S.

Obviously I will need to shoot in Manual exposure mode.

 

White Balance

I have done a WB change so I have a Preset value against Green grass. Is this suitable or should I use something else for a WB settings?

 

Focus Shift

I will get a focus shift I guess with my Schneider Componon S 135mm f5.6 when I shoot a flower but how much of a distance shift will I get what approx % of distance between camera focal plane and subject?

 

Post Processing

What colour will my RAW file look like when viewed in its unadjusted state?

What changes should I look to make to the RAW file to render it 'correctly' ?

 

Any advice to me please make it as though you are speaking to a complete newbie (as I am). :-)

 

Thanks

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The D70S will do ok for UV. It would, of course, perform better if the internal filtration is removed. I will look for a chart to show you.

 

Exposure is dependent upon the source of your UV illumination and your ISO setting. It is difficult to say just what you would need for f/8 or so using a lens-on-bellows. It will most likly be in the multi-second range in good UV light. 2-5" maybe??? (Do you have a UV flash?)

 

A Nikon camera will not white balance through a UV filter. Your preset against green grass is probably as good as any. Refinement of white balance will have to be performed when you convert the raw file, if such refinement is desired.

 

No one knows how much your Schneider-Comp will focus shift between Visible and UV unless they have used that lens for UV. There is no set amount of focus shift. It is lens dependent. But I assure you it is easy enough to determine by a little trial and error for a given aperature. Then you can make note of it for future reference. That is the way we all handled focus shift until we got Live View cams. :D

 

The actual raw UV NEF has dullish red/pink/orange colours. Your grass preset may give some different colour set and the colours will for sure be brighter and more saturated. Oversaturation happens easily in UV shooting. Be sure to use a in-camera neutral setting with no added contrast or saturation.

 

Your rendering of the raw NEF is entirely up to you. The colours you see are all false artifacts of the UV light's having to pass through the Bayer filter pigments. The colours have no meaning really. Typically we do perform a somewhat mechanical white balance procedure for the sake of a uniform appearance in our completed botanical work. You mentioned shooting a flower, so if you are going to do botanical shooting then you might want to read these tutorials about colour adjustment and white balance.

 

How to make UV colours reproducible

Photo Ninja: How to Make a Custom Light Profile

Colour Calibration in a Converted Camera

 

You have not mentioned what converter or editor you will be using. Photoshop ACR has underperformed for converting UV raw files. It has a Click-White tool which does not seem to be able to bring a UV photograph to full white balance. If you have access to one of Nikon's free View or NX-D tools, they will handle the white balance perfectily. Then you can save the file as a TIF for further editing in another app. Other apps such as Photo Ninja or Iridient Developer also work very well for the white balance step.

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http://kolarivision.com/articles/internal-cut-filter-transmission/

 

This link from Kolari Vision shows the transmission of the internal filter for various cameras. The Nikon D70 is shown, but not the D70S. I think however that they would be the same because we do have the D70S on our list as being a camera which will work for UV without conversion.

 

(Although any camera works better with conversion.)

 

******

 

I forgot to discuss ISO setting in my initial response. You would want to try to use the D70S at the lowest ISO setting possible for your UV illumination. This would be for noise prevention. Also earlier digital cameras did not have the high-ISO capability of today's models and had more noise at base ISOs. The base ISO for the D70S is 200, so 200-400 is probably the optimal range. After that you would begin to see increasing noise, but you could probably continue up to ISO 800.

 

You would choose your aperture for your artistic intent, as always. With UV diffraction softening sets in a little later (narrower aperture). The D70S had a small DX sensor, but only 6MP - a large pixel pitch. So I would think you would not get diffraction softening until f/11 - f/16 in UV.

 

You want f/11 - f/16 for close work, but that is going to very much increase exposure time when on a bellows and shooting UV. And longer exposures also increase noise.

 

I would suggest learning at f/8 and ISO-400 as a reasonable compromise. You will rapidly figure out how much further you can stop down and also whether you can shoot at a higher ISO.

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Andrea, Thanks for your comprehensive answer regarding the various questions I asked.

 

I would be interested to know how much more sensitive (stops) the CCD will be if the internal sensor filters were removed.

 

I will start my exposures using ISO400, f8 and vary my shutter speed to get correct exposure.

 

I have a large range of RAW developers:

Photoshop CS6 with ACR9.1.1,

Lightroom 6.4,

Aftershot Pro 2.4 (formerly Bibble that Bjorn and I used to use for IR and normal spectrum),

IridientDeveloper 3.08,

Photoninja v1.2.6

LightZone 4.1.5

 

Any pointers on RAW development of UV images would be helpful.

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Thanks very much for the Kolari url.

Very interesting set of spectral sensitivity data.

D70 seems useful unconverted but a full spectrum conversion might be a good way forward.

I have a 'spare' Fuji XE1 that I might get converted to full spectrum so I might use this instead of the Nikon D70 as it will give me LiveView functionality.

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In my D70 days, I kept to 200 and 400 ISO settings, but had no scruples about going even beyond f/16 on times. ISO 800 was too noisy as far as my memory recalls.

 

Expect [quite] a few secs exposure around f/8 to f/11 in sunshine with the Baader U and the Schneider lens. Thus tripod operation almost always is required.

 

While the D70 is no match for today's crop of UV-enabled cameras, it was nice and robust, albeit a little on the power-hungry side. So ensure you carry spares. Image quality sufficed to earn me lots of good money at the time too.

 

This old apple orchard was shot with the D70 and the EL-Nikkor 63 mm f/3.5/Hoya U-330 + BG-38. Less IR leak than one might fear since the camera's internal anti-IR filter was in place.

 

UV orchard B0405151195.jpg

 

f/16, 3 sec at 400 ISO.

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I used a D70s some time ago. It worked really well without conversion, and I liked the UV files which had more "color" than the D2Hs I'd been using before. However, focusing was very difficult with the tiny and dark viewfinder (and obviously DSLRs didn't have live view then) so I went back to the arguably inferior D2Hs.

I can confirm that ISO is best kept at 200 or 400. I mostly used flash as a light source, so I can't give any advice regarding exposure times.

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In my D70 days, I kept to 200 and 400 ISO settings, but had no scruples about going even beyond f/16 on times. ISO 800 was too noisy as far as my memory recalls.

 

Expect [quite] a few secs exposure around f/8 to f/11 in sunshine with the Baader U and the Schneider lens. Thus tripod operation almost always is required.

 

While the D70 is no match for today's crop of UV-enabled cameras, it was nice and robust, albeit a little on the power-hungry side. So ensure you carry spares. Image quality sufficed to earn me lots of good money at the time too.

 

This old apple orchard was shot with the D70 and the EL-Nikkor 63 mm f/3.5/Hoya U-330 + BG-38. Less IR leak than one might fear since the camera's internal anti-IR filter was in place.

 

post-2-0-55652400-1454491306.jpg

 

f/16, 3 sec at 400 ISO.

 

Well if I can get as good a photo as that one I would be very happy.

I always expected to have to use the tripod with UV.

f/16, 3 sec at 400 ISO is very acceptable. :-)

 

 

Bjorn do you have any Bibble5 or ASP saved settings of xmp data that I can steal from you for processing or do I need to hand craft each image.

 

Renaud, thanks for the insights into which Nikon camera and the darkness of the viewfinder of the D70.

I think that ultimately if I get into UV in a big way I will get a camera with LiveView functionality like Andrea has recommended as I fear that I will suffer!

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enricosavazzi

I still have a "full spectrum" converted D70s, although I only rarely use it. I did try to use it before conversion, but my results are different from those reported above. It performed usably in NIR before conversion (although it needed a tripod to shoot fully sunlit landscapes), but I never obtained usable NUV pictures before conversion. As already mentioned, this camera does not behave well at high ISO (or even at what we now regard as medium ISO, 500-800 ISO).

 

I cannot estimate with precision the difference in exposure stops before and after conversion, but I would say:

- a few stops difference in NIR (less than 10, perhaps around 5)

- several stops difference in NUV (far more than in NIR).

 

The main reason I prefer to use other converted cameras is that the D70s does not have Live View, so framing and focusing is only possible in VIS through the optical viewfinder, without a UV-pass or IR-pass filter on the lens. So no possibility to accurately compensate for focus shift, either (except by trial and error).

 

In its days, the D70s was regarded as one of the most usable DSLRs for NIR before conversion, and after conversion also for UV. Compared with my other, more modern converted cameras (Panasonic G3 and Olympus E-PM2), the converted D70s does not provide significant advantages.

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In the past, I analyzed the ICF of the D70 and the D70S and there is no difference, and the sensors themselves are identical.

Thanks that is useful to know as I have another D70 body that I use for underwater photography.

I need to know how I will get on in UV photography before commiting more money for better equipment.

 

 

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Thanks for the information, Shane. Never having used a D70s, I was uncertain as to the differences between the basic D70 and the 's'. I store the insight to my (not entirely reliable) memory banks :D

 

I quickly learned the huge difference in UV performance between D40 (good even unmodified) and D40X (useless without modification), as an example of behaviour of related camera models.

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Bjorn, I think that I remember many years ago that you used a D1 or D1X for your UV work. I have a D1X that I could get converted to UV. I only use it on my copy stand so converting it to UV is possible and then the D70S can go on the copy stand.

So I guess the question is would you advise that the D1X is better than the D70 in its unconverted state for UV or should I continue with D70S then go to a full spectrum converted Fuji XE1 which effectively has Liveview and EVF?

So many choices!

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This old apple orchard was shot with the D70 and the EL-Nikkor 63 mm f/3.5/Hoya U-330 + BG-38. Less IR leak than one might fear since the camera's internal anti-IR filter was in place.

 

Bjorn, Very beautiful shot!

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