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UltravioletPhotography

Time To Play Again


A Stranger In The Wind

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A Stranger In The Wind

Although I dropped by on occasion It has been 3 years since I last posted, and with my four certificate programs at school (Audio, Video, 3D modelling and photography) now completed it was time to do some more UV shooting. For fun I am taking a Garden photography course from a photographer who views garden photography from a different perspective. Hope to submit a couple of UV and or IR shots to my final assignment. Regretfully the smoke from the fires in British Columbia makes light difficult in Calgary and the winds have been breezy but did manage a couple of UV shots.

 

Thanks to everyone's postings and Andrea's filter samples I was added some new filters for UV and IR shooting. Your posts helped me to decide to add BG3, LUV U2, B410, UG5 and S8612.

 

From my Dad's backyard both with Coastal Optics 60

 

Canon 5d MKII Full Spectrum - played with Curves and color adjustment in Capture One

 

http://www.robert-chisholm.com/uvp/IMG_8130_900.jpg

 

Leica M246 Monochrom

 

http://www.robert-chisholm.com/uvp/L1001035_900.jpg

 

Hopefully today I will get some interesting shots. Still smokey but hopefully less wind.

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Nice to see you again. :)

 

I enjoyed the Leica photo also. I just now have that camera on the way to use with a Summicron 50/2.0 which has been sitting around here unused for about the last 8 years. I'll try to add some adapters later for other lenses.

 

Congrats on finishing the certificate programs.

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A Stranger In The Wind

Congrats on your incoming Monochrom.

 

No luck yesterday with UV the haze from the fires too thick and I was at 10,000 ISO and it was still under exposed by a couple of stops. Not a bad day though got to do my bokeh flower shooting with my Canon 50mm F1.0 and I discovered a garden I never knew about.

 

When you get your Monochrom a few tips to be aware of

 

1. When working with images in Post experiment with curves adjustments, the Leica files tend to be a little flat straight out of camera.

 

2. UV shooting with the Baeder works fine with the Nikkor-UV and Coastal Optics lenses.

 

3. I set my monitor brightness and EVF Brightness to High when shooting UV. The monitor is not always easy to preview the image in bright light so I find the EVF extremely helpful as it is clearer to see and although yesterday ISO10000 was not good enough the EVF allowed me to clearly see a bright flower so I could focus. I couldn't do that with live view as the screen was not bright enough. The EVF is not cheap (I got one second hand) and some complain on it's resolution but I am glad I have one it makes critical focusing much easier. Others have bought the Olympus VF2 it is supposedly the same EVF but I can't say I have tried it but others have posted in reviews that they got that for much cheaper.

 

4. The best results for infrared are IR720 or less. The sensor filter is too strong for any useful IR830 shots.

 

5. Set you Clipping Definition to 2/253. The Monochrom is very sensitive to highlights and will blowout easily on the light(white) side and not always noticeable when shooting. At least with

253 when reviewing the shot you will see how much red blinkees appear and can judge better if there was an over exposure.

 

4. Should you ever add or use Zeiss ZM lenses for IR shooting be sure to cover the lens where it mounts to the camera otherwise you will get flaring. This is because there is a small hole on the ZM lens that allows light through on long exposures when shooting IR. I normally take my old film changing bag to eliminate that problem. Problem doesn't occur with non IR shooting. I have a ZM35. I discovered the issue when I had the ZM25 and ZM50 but wasn't aware of the hole and returned them. If I had known I would have kept the lenses.

 

6. The issue does not occur with Leica M lenses but Leica M lenses no longer have an IR mark. With LiveView that point is mute but I found that the IR mark tended to be between F4 and F5.6 on the Leica M lenses I have.

 

7. The ZM lenses were designed for the Leica M film cameras on the digital M's there is a slight offset of focus. If you are shooting wide open and need critical focus use live view. Lloyd Chambers was the one who investigated this issue and informed Zeiss.

 

8. Some Monochrom 243 and 246 users will take a shot and the red light stays on. If you find that happens you will need to shutoff the camera and completely remove the battery and reinsert it. A pain if you have the camera mounted on a tripod. Both of mine have done this but when my 246 was serviced it occurred less frequently only twice in the past 1 1/2 years. For me it only occurs when I shoot a lot of shots in a short period of time.

 

9. Adapters for the monochrom are great to have. I have adapters for F, FD, and EF(wide open only). One of my favourite walk around lenses is the old Canon FD 35-105 F3.5.

 

10. Keep some ND filters handy on bright sunny days if you are shooting normal B&W photos and want to shoot wide open. The Base ISO of 320 and 1/4000 shutter speed doesn't allow for wide open shooting.

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Thank you for all this good info about the Monochrom. It's been quite a while since I had a Leica in hand, so I have some re-learning to do.
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