Hello from Texas

[alanb]

I'm Alan from central Texas. I've been doing photography since the mid-80s, when I took photography courses in high school. Shot film on a Minolta X700 for 18 years, then switch to digital in 2003 (Nikon 4500), then to a DSLR in 2008, shooting Canon. I shoot a lot of photos for local community theaters, and also travel and family pictures. It's technically a hobby, I work in computers, with some electrical engineering background as well.

 

I've always wanted to shoot infrared, but just this year had all the pieces in place to convert a camera: I upgraded my mirrorless EOS M3 to an M6, so the M3 has gone off for full-spectrum conversion.

 

For infrared I've standardized on 58mm filters, which covers all of my EOS-M lenses and some of my EF. I wanted to shoot UV too - because why not? - but a little research revealed that's somewhat more complex than IR. After a lot of reading, I've got a plan:

 

Lens: Tamron Adaptall-2 24mm f/2.5. This is an old film lens I've had since 1990 or so. Tamron's Adaptall-2 line is designed to be adapted for any camera, so it's easily adapted to Canon's EF mount, which can be adapted to EOS-M. I already have all of those parts, so no cost here. Other people on this site have reported decent results with this lens, so I'm hopeful.

 

Filter: Leaning toward a UvirOptics LaLaU UV-Pass, 52mm. This is slightly smaller than the 55mm threads on the Tamron. But the Tamron is a full-frame lens and I'm using it on a crop frame camera. I cut out a 52mm circle in paper and tested it, and it did not visibly vignette. So the stack from camera to filter is: EOS M3, EF-M to EF adapter, EF to Adaptall-2 adapter, Tamron 24mm f/2.5, 55-to-52 step down ring, 52mm UV-Pass filter.

 

Lighting: Sunlight at first. I also have some old flashes that might serve for a UV source indoors.

 

So that's me, hello everyone, thanks for putting this very useful site together.

[Andy Perrin]

Hi! Welcome!

 

Plan sounds decent. I don’t know that lens but be aware that sometimes the exact version of a lens can make a difference in UV. You will have to try it and see. Are there any optics in those adapters?

[alanb]

Hello Andy! No optics in the adapters. Their interior surfaces are black in visible light, I don't know if they're black in UV.

[JMC]

Welcome to the forum Alan.

 

I'm a Canon user too, but SLRs not mirrorless. The LaLaU is a good filter, and a lot cheaper than the Baader U which is often used. It's also 52mm so easy to mount (the Baader U comes in a non standard mount as it's used for astronomy, and is smaller than a 52mm filter).

 

As for the forum, read lots and ask lots of questions.

 

Jonathan

[nfoto]

Welcome to the UVP forum. Most questions will find their answer(s).

[dabateman]

Hello,

I have the same Tamron 24mm f2.5 adaptall lens. Yes it works for UV.

I haven't used that filter, but I think others have.

Important thing is to have fun.

[alanb]

...I have the filter now, but not the modified camera. Still managed to get some photos - with a 14 2/3 stop exposure penalty. However I can't figure out how to upload anything :D

[Andy Perrin]

Hit "More Reply Options" next to the Post button. With a non-modified camera, you will either get a very narrow UV bandpass (so just the 380-400nm region, usually), or visible light leakage even, depending on your filter.

[alanb]

Found it, thanks

 

LaLaU filter arrived. To casual inspection it is completely opaque. (It's supposed to have a window of transparency from around 320nm to 400nm, peaking around 365nm at >0.6; all visible is removed, IR suppression is at least OD5.) I have a UV flashlight and verified that it still causes florescence through the filter, though no visible light that I could see is passed.

 

I don't have the modified camera back yet, but presumably, like with IR, you can still shoot with this thing. Just with long exposures and likely visible/IR leaking.

 

So: Test camera is EOS M6 with a 22mm f/2 pancake lens. Other people have shown the Canon 40/2.8 pancake is decent so I figured it was a place to start.

 

UV pic. My hand has a stripe of sunscreen on it. This is straight from camera, no changes. Exposure is 0.6 s, f/2, ISO 1600.

 

 

Hand detail, snapped to B&W and contrast increased to make it a little clearer.

 

 

Scene with visible light. 1/2500 s, f/2, ISO 100.

 

[Andy Perrin]

Yup, those are definitely UV photos. Now you need a program that can set a proper UV white balance, like PhotoNinja (there are others, but that's the one I have). Photoshop is NOT able to do this, and neither is Lightroom.

[ulf]

Filter: Leaning toward a UvirOptics LaLaU UV-Pass, 52mm. This is slightly smaller than the 55mm threads on the Tamron. But the Tamron is a full-frame lens and I'm using it on a crop frame camera. I cut out a 52mm circle in paper and tested it, and it did not visibly vignette. So the stack from camera to filter is: EOS M3, EF-M to EF adapter, EF to Adaptall-2 adapter, Tamron 24mm f/2.5, 55-to-52 step down ring, 52mm UV-Pass filter. Lighting: Sunlight at first. I also have some old flashes that might serve for a UV source indoors. So that's me, hello everyone, thanks for putting this very useful site together.

 

Hi Alan

 

Welcome to the forum Alan!

 

I'm a Canon user too, but currently with an EOS 60D, full spectrum modified.

Had plans to convert an EOS M as a walk-around camera, but as I mostly do macro that has stalled.

 

Many good accidental good for UV-lenses are old and use the M42 mount.

I think some of these lenses would improve your exposure times a bit.

 

M42 is a good mount and without leakage problems.

You could get an M42 to EOS adapter if you wan to try some of those lenses. M42 to EOS-M adapters are also available.

 

The UvirOptics LaLaU UV-Pass filter is a good filter and 52mm is often a practical filter-dimension for UV-photography.

I made that my standard.

For IR I use 77mm instead.

 

If you shoot RAW and want a good RAW-viewer that handle white balance very well for all strangely filtered images, I can recommend https://www.fastrawv...tm_campaign=FRV

It is just a viewer, but very useful for selecting images for further processing.

It has a fully functional 30-day trial and it is IMHO really worth its price.

I like and use it a lot.

When I want some simpler images good enough for posting on the forum I just take selectively cropped screenshots instead of doing the full image processing.

[Andrea B.]

Hello Alan and welcome to UVP!! I hope you find the site interesting and get any info you might need for reflected UV photography. Be sure to see our Reference section for all kinds of pinned "Stickies".

 

I have the LaLaU and find it to be a worthy UV-pass filter stack. Be aware that uncoated filter stacks can eventually need a bit of cleaning if the glass begins to oxidize and produces a kind of film on the glass.

 

To ease the pain of purple/magenta overload, try to perform an in-camera white balance measurement through the UV-pass filter. Not all cameras can do this, BTW. If your Canon can do this, then the false colour should become a more manageable blue/yellow/grey/black/white. If the camera is not able to white balance through your UV-pass filter, then try a filterless "on the scene" white balance measurement. Of course, raw files are the way to go with reflected UV photography so that white balance can be changed, noisy shadows cleaned up and so forth.

 

We are looking forward to your contributions.

[alanb]

Thanks for tips. Camera is back and I got some preliminary pics.

 

My model was a feral calico cat that I'm semi-friendly with.

 

Deep IR filter (>850nm). Interesting thing here is the orange parts of the calico coat appear almost white, so she looks like a B&W cat.

 

Hoya R72 IR filter. This is more less normal IR, 720nm. She still looks like a B&W cat.

 

The Lifepixel visible-pass filter. Colors look odd to me but it's close to visible light.

 

Ultraviolet. 1/10 second at ISO 6400, not very sharp. Still clearly different from the others.

 

The white balance was gotten off her white fur. I used Capture One, which I'm not very familiar with. I'm trying to get away from Lightroom (tired of perpetual performance issues) so I decided to wrap IR, UV and Capture One into a large learning experience.

[Andy Perrin]

First time I have seen cat fur used as a white balance target. Who needs Spectralon? This is cuter.

[Andrea B.]

Alan, perhaps when you have a moment would you please repost Miss Calico over in the Fauna section? It would be a great entry there and we'd love to have it. Be sure to mention camera + lens + filter and provide some exposure data. The title, even though she is feral, would be Felis catus [Domestic cat].

 

That fur is so interesting. It seems the white and black areas are also UV/IR-reflecting and UV/IR-absorbing. But the orange fur is quite IR-reflecting and only partially UV-reflecting. So I had to go wiki-looking and found that orange fur has a pigment called phaeomelanin while black is eumelanin. Further reading somewhere would probably show that these two pigments have different UV/IR reflectivity, chemically speaking.

Cat Coat Genetics

 

I love it when we get such interesting UV/IR photos! They lead us down all kinds of paths. I've learned so much from UVP.

---

 

The Lifepixel visible-pass filter. Colors look odd to me but it's close to visible light.

 

Sometimes a filter alone is not quite enough to restore proper visible colours in a converted camera. It helps to make an in-camera white balance under your Lifepixel visible-pass filter against a known white standard. A slice of PTFE is used by many of us because it can also be used for WB in both IR and UV light as well as visible light. And I usually also recommend color profiling your camera under the lens and filter in use. I don't know if Capture One can make profiles or not? But the most important step is getting a white standard of some kind. See Reference section for more about this.

 

If you are already familiar with these suggestions, then kindly ignore! I don't have a way to know who knows what.

[alanb]

Another test, four lenses shot against each other. Noonday sun in August is about as good as we're likely to do for UV.

 

The scene in visible light. Flowers are scarce right now, but there's a trumpet vine still producing some, I picked up some that had fallen. Also a few marbles and a coin.

 

This is an Enna München Lithagon 28mm f/3.5, at f/5.6. After reading a lot I decided to look for one of these. I found one for 60 euro shipped from Germany, so picked it up. It's in excellent condition. Mine is M42 which is easily adapted to EF-M. This exposure is ISO 800, 1/8 s, f/5.6. That's 10 1/3 stops more exposure than the visible light photo. I got white balance off the coin's reflection of the sun.

 

This is a Tamron Adaptall-2 24mm f/2.5. It's adapted to Canon EF-M via a Adaptall-2-to-EF and EF-to-EF-M. This photo has same exposure as the Lithagon and is processed identically.

 

This is the Canon EF-M 22mm f/2 pancake. It's a native lens. Shot at f/5.6 and exposed and processed identically to the previous two.

 

And finally, what if we had no optics at all? This is a 40mm f/182 pinhole with the UV filter attached. The exposure was ISO 3200, 30 seconds. This was processed as the previous pictures. I was very puzzled by the color chart until I realized I set it up *upside down* for this photo. Makes comparisons to the previous pics more difficult, alas.

 

The Enna Lithagon seems the clear winner. The Tamron and Canon perform pretty close, though the Canon has better contrast. (The Tamron does need a cleaning of the front element which might explain that.) The pinhole gets a lot more color, especially yellow, but the exposure and sharpness are clearly unusable for most work.

[Andrea B.]

Good tests! The Lithagon is definitely a keeper.

 

FWIW, a reasonable white balance can be made on the black patch of the color checker passport when you don't have a white standard available.

 

The two Canons are probably capturing in the near quarter 375-400 nm given the results of the way you processed against the more far reaching Lithagon.

 

Did you mention somewhere what UV-pass filter you are using?

[alanb]

It's a LaLaU filter. Should be open from 315 to 400 or so, peak at 363, 50%-of-peak from around 335 to 385.

 

I can get the calico pics reposted this evening.

 

Incidentally, the UV-capable-lens chart says that Lithagon has 49mm filters, but mine has 52mm. I'm not sure if mine is odd.

[Andrea B.]

You are off to a great start, Alan!

No hurry on the calico photos. Post them whenever you have some time.

 

I'll check around about the Lithagon 28/3.5 front filter size. Could be we have it wrong or could be that there were various models made.

[Andrea B.]

The usual references say 52mm so I'll fix that in the Lens Sticky. Thanks for pointing it out.

[bsas]

Hi Alan, where in Texas are you from? I am here in Austin and I would love to go out in a photo shoot with another IR/UV person :D

 

By the way, where did you bought the UvirOptics LaLaU filter? Can you send me a link? Thanks!

[alanb]

I'm around College Station. I don't make it out to Austin often. Too much traffic :)

 

I got the LaLaU filter on eBay, from seller uviroptics. He doesn't appear to be selling any right now, but he is selling some UV filters and some IR cut filters. LaLaU is basically a stack of one each of those (he says a Hoya UV filter and a Schott IR cut filter, but doesn't specify which ones, or their thickness.) I believe he also sells on Etsy, so he might have some there. His website is http://www.uviroptics.com/ . I sent him some messages on eBay and he responded quickly, so you could ask there if he's going to make more soon.

 

I chose LaLaU because a one-filter solution appealed to me, and because it has excellent suppression of IR. The sticky topic here on this forum is an excellent reference about the available filters - https://www.ultravioletphotography.com/content/index.php/topic/663-sticky-uvvisir-filters/