Happy UV/IR New Year, 2018 !

[Andrea B.]

As the new year begins to roll in around the world, my thoughts are turning to plans for new UV/IR photography projects. I have been wanting to photograph some scenes in my township in UV-Vis-IR. This requires some planning in order to efficiently work in portfolio mode. And I have also been trying to select about 12-15 "good" UV botanical photographs for printing. It should be no surprise that what looks monitor-good when posted on UVP can look pretty bad when printed. So there is a whole new technical area to figure out.

 

UltravioletPhotography.com will be 5 years old in March 2018. We had no idea how this forum would work out when we began. It is satisfying to see that we are still chugging along.

 

How about you? What are you going to do in UV/IR for 2018 ?? Tell us about your proposed projects whether new or continuing.

[Andy Perrin]

Oh I have so many projects I want to do!

 

-Revise the computational filter selection chart to reflect people’s suggested improvements/ideas

-Reuse my SWIR fluorescent screen setup with a UVB-to-vis fluorescent screen to do UVB imaging (in some kind of closed box for safety)

-See if I can reprocess those RAW images in infrared to get more resolution out

-Make a filter wheel setup like Carmium’s

[Bill De Jager]

Looking back...

 

What I really want is a do-over for the total solar eclipse of August 21, 2017. I had great plans to photograph totality in the near-UV, visible, and near-IR bands, among other things I had set up. However, I forgot to remove the solar filters from the three cameras I had set up for this purpose so I got nothing from them. If photographing the three spectral bands had worked out as planned, then I could have done a false-color composite of the corona in UV-vis-IR as well as an HDR composite in visible light.

 

I'd practiced my totality routine thoroughly but I'd hardly practiced the extended lead-up to totality. This was a big mistake, which also resulted in my leaving my binoculars some distance away when totality arrived. I think my role in the eclipse was to serve as a warning to others regarding mistakes not to make. On the other hand, I got to see the corona with my eyes and my eyesight emerged unscathed from the overall eclipse experience, so I succeeded in the most important tasks!

 

Perhaps in 2024...

 

Looking forward!

 

First is getting out to the California desert for the first time in a few years and taking some UV photos among others. I should have been out there right now and for the next week but work intervened. :( Hopefully sometime in the next three months I'll make it. There won't be any wildflower displays this spring, though, as it's been far too dry. It is a desert, after all.

 

Next is delving back (where I left off a few years ago) into properly learning the color processing of UV photographs.

 

Finally, I'd like to try multi-spectral composite photography of the moon. I have the equipment but I need to make the time and exert the effort.

[JMC]

Happy New Year everyone. 2017 was a learning year for me on UV imaging. I found the forum when looking for information on UV photography given a research project I was starting on, and it has been great to talk with so many knowledgeable people. I was fortunate enough to be able to do some cool research into the area this year and get a paper out of it, with another one ready to go (once I finish the references).

 

As for 2018, one thing I'd love to get a handle on is a way of measuring spectral sensitivity of cameras. I have a few ideas, so fingers crossed I can do some interesting research on that. Other than that, I'll see where the research takes me.

[Andy Perrin]

JMC, read this, the method looks quite promising:

https://www.osapublishing.org/josaa/abstract.cfm?uri=josaa-33-4-589#Abstract

[JMC]

Thanks Andy, probably best if I read it tomorrow. Having opened it, reading through complex maths is proving problematic at 10:30pm on new years eve....

[Andy Perrin]

Hah, I’m sure. This is not the only statistical approach to the problem, so google around for more. PCA and ICA have both been used.

[Cadmium]

Not to make light of a serious subject on New Years Eve, but right now some Indian food sounds good to me. :P

[JMC]

JMC, read this, the method looks quite promising:

https://www.osapubli...-4-589#Abstract

Thanks Andy for the paper, although I must admit even without various beers I'm still struggling (maths of this level is not good for my small brain). It does look like I'd still need a spectroradiometer, and a large light cabinet to provide an even light source to be able to capture the original image for the chart. This is fine for the visual spectrum but I think would be a problem for the UV (to try and get a reasonably even illumination from 280-400nm). Nice approach though, and they did give a link to how the 'ground truth' data for the cameras was collected, so thanks for posting it.

[Andy Perrin]

JMC, you can just capture the target a bit at a time and make a panorama. But also I was thinking in UV it would be easier to make something like Cadmium’s rack of filters (sParticle?) where each filter has a known spectrum and photograph it with sunshine coming from the back. No matter what you do, past 320nm you are going to have some poor data because signal to noise ratio will be bad.

[Guest]

Happy new year everyone! I'm going to look for more foods, odd foods, interesting foods, delicious foods, and maybe some other foods to shoot this year. Oh, and if I have time, I'll shoot even more foods!

[aphalo]

Happy New Year everyone!

Umm... I guess first on my list should be to complete the writing of a couple of posts here, which I have marked as DRAFT... While waiting for sun and flowers I am planning to do some UV tests of the lenses I have... continue playing with "24 h/a few days" continuous time lapse of growing plants using IR LEDs (940 nm) as light source... and looking forward to using the LEDS already announced by Rayvio (http://rayvio.com/xpseries/) but not yet available: "cheap" medium power LEDs emitting at 310 nm. And having fun with UV and IR photography!

[Andrea B.]

Yes, Pedro, I was wondering about those Draft posts !!

 

We would enjoy hearing about and seeing results of your lens tests.