Greetings!

[cmoody]

Hello all

 

I'm Chris, from the UK. I've not really got a "location" as my current job is with Sheffield university, though I live in Norfolk, and I am doing most of my work at museums around the country!

 

I've joined today as I have just started on a two-year project that includes photography of museum specimens in human-visible and bird-visible spectrums. I'm a keen photographer anyway, and so am really excited by the prospect of experimenting with UV photography, and am lucky enough to have access to a Nikon UV 105mm lens along with modified D7000 bodies and Baader filters for them.

 

I'm sure I'll have lots of questions in the coming months, and this website looks to be a great resource for techniques and information!

 

Kind regards

 

Chris

[nfoto]

Welcome to our small yet growing UV community, Chris.

 

No question in the field of UV photography is too trivial so don't hesitate to ask for help if so is required and do share your experiences.

 

On a tangential note, I think the UVP community as a whole now has the highest density of available UV-Nikkors and other UV exotica seen anywhere in the world :)

[cmoody]

Thanks you for the welcome.

 

One thing I found quite interesting a couple of weeks ago, when I was first starting out, was that *most* places on the internet refer to the UV-Nikkor 105mm as being discontinued, expensive, and rare as gold-dust. Then a few weeks ago we discovered it's actually still in production by Nikkons daughter company, Tochigi:

 

http://www.tochigi-nikon.co.jp/en/products/lens/uv.htm

 

It's still quite expensive however, at approximately £5000 in the UK!

 

I thought I would mention it here to help bump it in search engines, as some of the top google search results will tell you it hasn't been in production for many years, which apparently isn't true?!

 

I'm currently trying to read into methods of false-colour processing for bird vision. I've followed the instructions for bee-vision, which I guess is quite straight forward due to only needing 3 channels, but am now scratching my head over a method to incorporate 4 channels into a single image?!

[Alex H]

Have you looked into "butterfly-vision" subjects? That is supposed to be tetrachromatic too.

[Alex H]

This collage has nothing to do with any type of vision, but shows how three and four channels can be combined into single image:

 

http://www.holovachov.com/img/s10/v106/p822179996.jpg

[colinbm]

Welcome Chris, & I am sure many of us will enjoy your journey & share our knowledge with you.

Col

[JCDowdy]

Greetings Chris,

 

Sounds like an interesting project you are beginning!

 

May ask, what sort of museum specimens are you examining in your research?

 

You are very fortunate to have access to such fine equipment.

[nfoto]

The existence of the UV 105 Rayfact lens has been well known for years, here and elsewhere. Klaus Schmidt has it listed on his lens site if I recall correctly. So am a little surprised the search engines cannot come up with such a basic fact.

[Andrea B.]

Hello Chris and welcome to UltraVioletPhotography.com. I hope you enjoy the site. :)

We would welcome a sample of your work posted here sometime!!

 

Please note that we have listed a great deal of equipment & gear for UV photography in our Lists board.

There you will find the Lens Sticky which lists currently manufactured UV lenses - including the Rayfact 105/4.5.

 

Currently we are talking about revisions to the Lens Sticky, so it is under edit and has some rough patches. I hope to have it tidied up soon.

[cmoody]

The existence of the UV 105 Rayfact lens has been well known for years, here and elsewhere. Klaus Schmidt has it listed on his lens site if I recall correctly. So am a little surprised the search engines cannot come up with such a basic fact.

 

That is my point. I "found out" about the Rayfact/Tochigi lens through Klaus. Usually if you google a lens, you'll almost always get the manufacturers information page and other distributors listing the item...If you google Nikkon uv 105mm, the first few results are from 3rd-part distributors or message boards, Many of which dwell on how rare the lens is, when in reality it should be no more difficult to get one than any other lens still in production.

 

Compare this to googling a normal lens, such as "Canon 50mm f1.8" and you're almost immediately taken to the Canon main product information page, and distributors that list the spec and description.

 

Another example is that I was under the impression it is still a "Nikkor UV 105mm" lens, according to a UK distributor it's not a reproduction, as it's still the same as it was 20 years ago, still produced by Nikon (in the sense that Tochigi is part of Nikon), so it adds to the confusion when it is referred to as a Rayfact (Which until now I hadn't heard of :)), or Tochigi lens?

 

Please accept my apologies if these posts come across as a bit naive, I just find it quite interesting how niche this lens seems to be! Even the fact that there is a copy (Coastal optics) even suggested that the original didn't exist any more, and given that there isn't much difference in price (in the scheme of things) it's a bit baffling, at least to me :)

[cmoody]

Greetings Chris,

 

Sounds like an interesting project you are beginning!

 

May ask, what sort of museum specimens are you examining in your research?

 

 

We're looking at bird skins and beaks. I fear I may be a bit limited in the kinds of images I can show, as most museums here have strict copyright rules regarding images of their specimens.

 

We do have a few of "our own" specimens though, which once we have all the equipment together, and a fairly reliable method, I hope I will be able to share with you!

[Andrea B.]

I think the difficulty is that Tochigi Nikon gives the clone lenses they make the brand name "Rayfact". So, naturally, if you Google for UV-Nikkor you will probably not see the Rayfact.

 

Chris, I understand about the possible restrictions. "-) It certainly sounds like a fascinating project.

This has reminded me that I picked up a really nice hawk feather a couple of weeks ago to photograph.

Dave has posted a peacock feather photo here: http://www.ultravioletphotography.com/content/index.php?/topic/775-peacock-feather/page__hl__peacock__fromsearch__1

[cmoody]

In our test runs at a museum I have in a sense been running amok with the modified camera, photographing specimens at random to get a feel for the process!

 

From what I can gather raptors tend not to have much UV reflectance. I'm not sure if this is due to not wanting to stand out when hunting, or just that their eyes are tailored more to fast detailed vision than broad-spectrum/low light. Next week I plan on trying some blue-tits and Gros-beaks, which may have strong reflectance. It is frustrating at the moment as I have a non-UV lens, due to the time it takes for the ordering process to go through. As such I don't get much interesting in the shots!

[JCDowdy]

Chris,

I thought that might be what you were doing. A word of caution, I remember seeing a paper somewhere discussing preservation artifacts in UV reflectance of taxidermy specimens of birds. I cannot put my finger on it right now, I will see if I can dig it up if you do not already have it.

 

You might want to check out my American Goldfinch video posted a while back.

 

OK, I created an account on Vimeo and uploaded my UV-video of a pair of American Goldfinches on one of my Dad's homemade bird feeders.

 

The WB seems OK and clearly shows rather striking false UV-yellow especially on the male. The video quality on Vimeo is less than my native file presumably due to how they compress.

 

My stills were from a farther distance and I never really got a good clean focus. As you can see these birds are rather active and to make matters worse the feeder was swaying too! I will post the best of my poor attempt in UV fauna later.

 

I also had Grossbeaks with UV bright patches. There was an Indigo Bunting which to my surprise was rather uniformly light in UV, as I suspect you will find the Blue-Tits to be also. The Cardinals were uniformly dark. My photos were of such poor quality that I did not post them, but I will if you want to see them anyway.

[DaveO]

Hi Chris,

 

Don't let my current location in Oz fool you, I grew up in Yorkshire (Huddersfield in fact) studied in Birmingham and moved out here in 1967. This site is a wonderful resource. I've taken the easy route of taking UV shots of feathers and so far haven't found anything really interesting. However there are some interactions of visible and UV Australian native flower colours with pollinators. In particular with "Emu Bushes" or Eremophila the insect pollinated ones tend to be blue/mauve/violet in Vis and similar false colour UV but the bird pollinated ones tend to be Visible red/orange and false UV black. There's at least one PhD in there I'm sure! Our blue Superb Wrens are said to have UV reflective patches (if only they would stay still for even a whole second).

 

Welcome aboard,

 

Dave

[cmoody]

Chris,

I thought that might be what you were doing. A word of caution, I remember seeing a paper somewhere discussing preservation artifacts in UV reflectance of taxidermy specimens of birds. I cannot put my finger on it right now, I will see if I can dig it up if you do not already have it.

 

Yes, it's a challenge for lots of reasons. Age is an important factor too, with colour loss (potentially) happening. The curators are also naturally cautious about any lighting being used, which doesn't help when you want bright, UV light! It is one of those things where we just won't know until we do it I guess,!