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UltravioletPhotography

UV Movie ?


Jim Lloyd

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I was trying to make a UV movie. Just out of curiosity to see if it was possible, rather than for a specific reason at the moment. Using my converted Nikon D3200, Nikon E 50 mm lens and UG1 2 mm and BG40 2mm filter. At around asa 1600, f4 or 5.6, I could get enough exposure for the 1/30 sec frame rate. I found two problems - 1. there was no way I could white balance the .mov file produced. I am not sure of the technicalities, but I guess this is rather like a jpg rather than raw file? Secondly because of the high asa the image was noisy and I couldn't correct - I haven't looked into this further as I think the WB balance problem needs to be solved first. Or maybe I would have to be content with monochrome?

 

Any tips or advice for creating UV movies? does anyone do this?

 

I have had a play around in the past with a kind of movie made using burst mode - I might experiment with that next, I just looked up spec and 4 frames per sec for raw is possible.

 

Thanks

 

Jim

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I do UV video with my modified Panasonic GH-2 cameras (in fact that is my main motivation for keeping those items). Using the Coastal 60 or UV-Nikkor 105, it's easy to "UV white" balance in camera and the UV footage needs no further adjustment. The GH-2 delivers video in AVCHD format and at least in broad daylight, getting 1920x1080 video with good quality is quite easy.
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Jim, there may be a better stack then that, and a better lens? If you could get some more light in there it would fix your noise problem. My Sony NEX can white balance in camera, but I know not all cameras are able to. I know white balancing could be done offline in MATLAB (which is my Swiss Army knife software for all image processing tasks that I don't own commercial software for -- I just write it myself). There may be other programs that can also do it without coding.
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A crude screen dump from a UV video shot with the Panasonic GH-2 and the UV-Nikkor. This is straight off the camera, no further colour massaging.

 

taraxacum screen dump from UV video.jpg

 

Captured in cloudy and overcast weather.

 

Members of UVP will not get bonus points for identifying the genus correctly :D

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To perform that kind of image modification on a video, it is helpful to have something like Adobe Premiere (which can be thought of as the video equivalent of Photoshop.)
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Second the recommendation for using a modified Panasonic Lumix from the G line for UV-video. I have a modded GH1.

The vid on my Sony a7r is ok also but that camera is such a pain to use. YMMV, of course!!! We all have our personal tolerances.

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Thanks all. Sounds like I am not going to get this to work with my current equipment and software. Not able to white balance in camera or in Lightroom or premiere pro.

 

I will have another go later.

 

I quite like movies made form still image as in the seminal "La Jette" by Chris Marker

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Hi, Jim, I've always wanted to do a short film in UV too. However there are some serious difficulties in equipment. First, it is difficult to get 1/50 shutter speed even under bright day light, but compare to shooting interior, it is still much easier to do outside. A good full frame camera with a dedicated UV lens can help you a bit, but still, it's going to be hard.

For interior scenes, there are two types of lighting equipment I know that can output some decent amount of UV, one is HMI, it is mostly in the longer wavelengths because of a safety glass filter installed inside. The other choice is UV LED, they are made up to 500W for industrial use, I think it is possible to find one with enough and also at a safe wavelength. Again, lighting the scene is another challege, because of the nature how UV renders skin texture, a softer lighting would be more pleasing, such as through a softbox or using a ring light. However, in order to diffuse the light, we lose brightness, for UV this happens more progressive than a longer wavelength.

White balance is another challange, when it is done based on skin tone, everything else tend to be too yellow, if it was done on a white wall, skin would become too purple, which is why UV portrait look much better in black and white. If you were to make the film in black and white, then a debayered camera would be your best choce, as you can get 5 times mire light than from a normal sensor.

I have shot a short video in UV before, here is a link below. It was done using my BMCC(it is really not sensitive to UV) with the hot mirror taken out, I have a industrial quartz lens with U360 S8612 stack, and under the brightest midday sun it is barely enough to get exposure under f4 aperture and 1/24 shutter speed.

https://vimeo.com/230474549

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