Rodolfa

[Stefano]

As you may know, I just finished high school. In our classroom, we had the statue of a horse that we called "Rodolfa". She was found on the roof of our school, in the first year, since we were working on a project to imagine how to change the school. I have no idea how and why she went there.

 

Initially she, or it, as you prefer, was completely white. Then a classmate took her home, and his brother painted her "rainbowy". After a bit of time, he brough her in our classroom again, and we kept her for five years. Everytime we changed our classroom, we also took her to the new one.

 

Just after my exam, I had the opportunity to take her. And so, now, she is in my bedroom.

 

I photographed her in UV, visible and IR light. Note: I am sorry if the photos are not perfect, but it's the fifth attempt and I'm done with it.

• The first time the camera moved;
  
• The second time I had a light leak in my UV image;
  
• The third time the sun went in and out, since it was a bit cloudy;
  
• The fourth time the camera didn't properly focus;
  
• And the fifth time the images were good enough. I have a limited hardware, I had to tape my tripod to the ground, white balance each shot in camera with a paper tissue, change the ISO and exposure for the UV image, use a pair of polycarbonate goggles to cut UV in the visible image (UV is a bit visible, it makes the sky pinkish), all with handmade filters using paper rolls and tape, and I have to rely on the autofocus, since I can't manually focus.
  

So...

 

Camera: Full spectrum Panasonic DMC-F3.

 

UV: ZWB2 (2 mm) + chinese BG39 (2 mm)

VIS: chinese BG39 (2 mm) + polycarbonate goggles

IR: Hoya R72

 

UV: F-stop: f/2.8, ISO 400, 1/8 s exposure.

 

VIS: F-stop: f/7.1, ISO 200, 1/800 s exposure.

 

IR: F-stop: f/7.1, ISO 200, 1/1000 s exposure.

 

UV: F-stop: f/2.8, ISO 400, 1/8 s exposure.

 

VIS: F-stop: f/7.1, ISO 200, 1/800 s exposure.

 

IR: F-stop: f/7.1, ISO 200, 1/800 s exposure.

 

UV: F-stop: f/2.8, ISO 400, 1/8 s exposure.

 

VIS: F-stop: f/7.1, ISO 200, 1/1000 s exposure.

 

IR: F-stop: f/7.1, ISO 200, 1/1000 s exposure.

 

UV: F-stop: f/2.8, ISO 400, 1/8 s exposure.

 

VIS: F-stop: f/7.1, ISO 200, 1/800 s exposure.

 

IR: F-stop: f/7.1, ISO 200, 1/1000 s exposure.

 

Note: the leg was already broken.

[Cadmium]

Stefano, Quite a nice set, well done.

[Stefano]

Thank you. If I only could manually focus...

[Andy Perrin]

Nice! You could try SmartDeblur to deconvolve the image and reduce the blur. It is superior to a simple sharpening filter with practice. Even supposedly "lost" information can be recovered, like when people try to gaussian blur a license plate...

 

SmartDeblur is cheap but not free. I forget what I paid, but it was something like $50US or less.

[Stefano]

Interesting. I remember learning about it in a course I took in a university. We did it in Matlab. It involved matrixes and I don't remember anything about the process. We first blurred an image, than de-blurred it and compared it to the original. Some information had been lost, but you could recover it to some extent.

[Andy Perrin]

Yeah, a surprising amount of information is just rearranged by lens blurring. The process does not work as well on motion blur.

[Andrea B.]

And there's the famous Rodolfa!

She looks quite lovely in Infrared, I think.

It might be interesting to see Rodolfa amongst the dandelions or in the grass.

[Stefano]

And there's the famous Rodolfa!

She looks quite lovely in Infrared, I think.

It might be interesting to see Rodolfa amongst the dandelions or in the grass.

Maybe one day...