Brittany American Cemetery

[Steven]

First UV landscape trials with a lens not designed for this purpose.

 

Brittany American Cemetery is located in France, Normandy.

 

It is difficult to express how heavy atmosphere is when you visit such a place. Pictures in the invisible spectrum reinforce this feeling of heaviness.

 

Equipment: Nikon D3200 Broadband - Baader-U - El-Nikkor 80mm f / 5.6 - sunlight - white balance on crosses

 

All pictures @ f/11, ISO 400, various exposure times

 

 

 

 

 

 

Other views in IR: same place in June 2016 (with leaves on trees) here and here

[Guest]

I especially like the first of these UV images - very haunting. Though I have to say, the IR versions feel so much more peaceful.

 

Also, I'd like to see what it looks like in UV in June, with the trees full of leaves (to compare to the IR versions).

[Cadmium]

Steven, These are very nice!

[DonPilou]

This is great indeed.

[Andrea B.]

These photos are very moving.

 

Some musings:

I personally find reflected UV a difficult medium for landscape or location photography. So it is very nice to see members here on UVP using it successfully for such fotos such as this historical site and the recent Louvre fotos and member OlDoinyo's exploration of various sites and locations.

 

Steven, I would suggest lifting the midtone curve just a bit? UV fotos tend to be dark, but there is no particular necessity to keep details (such as in the grassy areas) obscured. Remember when you convert a raw reflected UV photo, you are making use of "gamma" and curves designed for Visible photos. UV photos may need a different setting for their midtone curve. But I hasten to add that the artist's vision is paramount. However you think your UV photograph should look will be respected. :)

[Steven]

Thank you Andrea for your valuable advice.

We learn everyday and it’s for me a little step further in UV spectrum.

 

At first I did not want to distort RAW pictures to much with a heavy process. I reviewed the process by swapping red and blue channels and adjusting levels and contrast at the best.

Result is not perfect but on my side (apart from the artistic POV) it looks much better.

 

Original post is edited with re-processed pictures.

[Andrea B.]

Steven, it takes a lot of experimentation to figure out the best processing for UV files. Channel swapping may not work as well with some UV photographs as it does with IR photographs because there so much stored in the Red channel in a UV file. But we never know until we try it on a particular set of photos. So I encourage you to always experiment with every set you make. We have no "rules" in UV photography except for the general guidelines we would all apply to any photograph (well-exposed, well-composed, and so forth).

 

Now that you have lightened the midtones a bit, I am somewhat unsure whether that was the thing to do for this set? Yes, there is more small detail visible in the foreground dark areas but now the overall contrasts seem slightly diminished. Perhaps you should quit listening to me I think!!! I apologize for making you do so much work!

 

[if you would like me to try a conversion in Photo Ninja to see how it handles D3200 files, put a raw file in Dropbox and I'll download it.]

[Andy Perrin]

Hah. I liked the originals more (in this case), also. But I do usually lighten the dark parts so I can see some detail. This seems to have been an exception to the general rule. Which is why you can't make general rules in art -- so many exceptions!

[Steven]

Quite sure I have all tools to give the best to these pictures but as per my current knowledge on processing landscape picture things I would like to do (as Andy said: lighten dark parts) don't work for the whole picture...in that case I get a milky/cloudy background...

 

Andrea, you should now have a Dropbox link to these RAW files. It's my turn to apologize for making you extra work :)

 

As usual any advice is welcome.

[Andrea B.]

Steven, thank you so much for sharing your photo files with me. It is very useful in my position here try to learn how the various cameras perform for UV photography. Perhaps that way I can provide useful information for everyone.