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Here's a few more color IR pics from the film era. These were all shot on Kodak Ektachrome Infrared film with a Rollei 35S rangefinder camera. That little camera made a great sidekick to the usual bulky SLR setup. The lens accepted 30.5mm filters of which I used the #9 (yellow) and #21 (orange) filters here. These photos are from the annual Spring Arts & Craft Festival held every year around this time in Fountain Hills, Arizona. All of these shots feature the signature fountain that this community was built around just northeast of Phoenix. It was the highest fountain in the world from 1970 when it was created until 1985 when a larger one in Saudi Arabia was completed. It usually runs every day for the first 15 minutes of each hour from 9AM to 9PM. First pic is with the #9 yellow filter. The #21 orange filter was used for the next two. Finally, here's a pic from 1985 of the same event that shows what happens when the wrong processing was used on this film. I'm not sure but I think they used C-41 (color negative) processing here. This version of the film required E-4 processing which was only available at a limited number of labs. (Later on in the 1990s a version was released which could use the common E-6 process.) Much easier to fix digital processing mistakes these days than the chemical blunders of the film era.

After spending a year or so experimenting with IR photography I obtained a Tiffen 18A filter for UV photography. It had a similar pass spectrum to the modern day ZWB1 filter with maybe a later cut-on above 300nm. They both have a good UV-A passband but also an IR passband that extends into the deep red. I decided to use a non-panchromatic film (little or no red sensitivity) that was just sensitive to blue & green to get a 'pure' UV image. I had a roll of Kodak SO-410 film which was used for photomicrography and imaging phosphor screens like oscilloscopes and radar screens that were blue or green. I did several VIS/UV comparison shots on an old Agfa rangefinder camera to see what the differences were. To keep the bandwidths about the same I used a #47 blue filter for the VIS photos. Unfortunately I was unable to locate the matching UV & VIS negatives for most of them. Here is one set from my photo album (remember those?) that I can't find the negs for. Left pic is with the #47 blue filter and right pic is with the 18A. These show a mountain about 2 miles away that gets very hazy in the UV pic. Apparently evidence of the extra Rayleigh scattering of UV. The only set of matching VIS and UV negs I could find are the recent scans I just made below. First one is blue VIS and second one is UV-A. If you download these last two pics you can do a 'blink' test and see the different haze effect between Blue and UV-A more clearly. Aside from a few indoor tests with spectrum tubes shortly afterwards I lost interest in UV photography. Compared to the general darkening and increased haze in UV, IR photography offered haze penetration and a magical brightened rendition of vegetation. The adventure of color IR film was also a huge attraction. Only in recent years did I get interested in UV photography again thanks largely to this site and the many contributors here.

In the 1990s I decided to revisit IR photography using my medium format Pentax 6x7 SLR. It was a clunker of a camera weighing several pounds with an additional lens. I took it on only two or three major trips due to its size and weight. I found a new film in 120 size called Konica Infrared 750nm. It was also available in 35mm. From what I can find now it was discontinued in 2005. Here's a couple pics from a stopover in Fiji on the way to New Zealand in 1995. I was using an SLR so I decided to use a #29 dark red filter so I could frame and focus through the lens normally for bright daylight shots. Next stopover was in the Cook Islands. The red filter didn't yield the black sky I prefer with B&W IR but using opaque filters with an SLR sorta needs a tripod which I didn't have. I never did try the 35mm version of the film but I did like the better tonal range than was possible with Kodak High Speed Infrared film. (Had to change the dimensions of the fourth by one pixel to get it to upload.)???

The following experiments are inspired by the findings of @Christoph Here is a series of pictures with my full spectrum canon 1200D and a stack of these three filters : Midopt Triple bandpass 550/660/850nm Lee "Flesh pink" gel GRB3 from Tangsinuo The transmission curve of the three filters combined should look something like this : Both the green and the IR spike are heavily filtered. When the TB is used alone, it seems to suffer from a very weak red transmission : without the GRB3 the red channel records as much (if not more) IR than red, requiring IR subtraction of 100%. The green spike transmission to the contrary is very powerful. To the eye (at least mine) the filter is green. I'm not sure how bright humans are able to percieve red at 660nm, its pretty deep already. I then decided to reduce the transmission of IR and green equally to give room for the red transmission. The GRB3 is used to minimise IR contamination in the RED channel and the Lee gel is used minimise green contamination in the blue/IR channel and to make it more or less match the level of output of the red channel. The blue channel stays very underexposed compared to the two others, and is brought back in white balance (pretty extreme : lower than 1900Kelvin). The exposure value with these filters ranges from 1/50s to 1/100s in sunlight at f5.6, 200iso. It's a very dark combo. All the pictures are channel swapped in Resolve from the camera Jpegs, the process is video ready. No saturation was added and zero IR substraction is needed. The fact that IR transmission is cut by 90% by the GRB3 causes some green leaks to be percieved in the Blue/IR channel. This leads to the need to apply a hue correction to the sky in order to make it look properly blue and not purple-ish. This process is simple and non-destructive. The original color of the sky after channel swap : Important notice : The channel swap causes a significant decrease in contrast and micro-contrast. For a moment I thought this was due to the Jpeg compression but it is not. Do you remember this law ? Y = 0.1 Blue + 0.6 Green + 0.3 Red It is actually crucial in understanding why the images look better unswapped. It describes how the human eye is sensitive to luminosity. The green value is far more decisive in the percieved brightness of an object than the red and blue values. A quick exemple Unswapped image : Swapped image : it looks less detailed and dynamic. The contrast beetween the bright grass and the dark trees is lessened Swapped image but with the "preserve luminance" box ticked : the image is sharper and more alive. (Click on the image and use the viewer to compare both instantaneously.) Explanation : The grass in the unswapped image appears turquoise. Let's make it cyan for the sake of clarity. The trees appear blue. Cyan RGB values are (0; 255; 255) Blue RGB values are (0; 0; 255) The minimum luminance(Y) is 0 and the maximum luminance is 1. Y(cyan grass) = 0.1x Blue(255/255) + 0.6x Green(255/255) + 0.3x Red(0/255) = 0.7 Y(blue trees) = 0.1 x B(255/255) + 0.6 x G(0/255) + 0.3 x R(0/255) = 0.1 in the unswapped image the contrast beetween the brightness of the trees and the grass is important : Y=0.1 versus Y=0.7. Now, let's do the same for the swapped image where the grass is magenta and the trees are red. Y(magenta grass) = 0.1 x B(255/255) + 0.6 x G(0/255) + 0.3 x R(255/255) = 0.4 Y(red trees) = 0.1 x B(0/255) + 0.6 x G(0/255) 0.3 x R (255/255) = 0.3 in the swapped image the contrast beetween the brightness of the trees and grass is less important than in the original image (Y=0.3 versus Y=0.4) In this chart the colors are ranked by luminance. white Y=1, yellow Y=0.9, cyan Y=0.7, green Y=0.6, magenta Y=0.4, red Y=0.3, blue Y=0.1, black Y=0 As you can see here the brightness of Magenta and Red is very close as opposed to cyan and blue that are very far apart. So that's why channel swapping sometimes makes the image lose quality. A solution to this is to tick the box "preserve luminance" in the channel mixer. It doesn't work in every situation since it makes the yellow objects turn way darker, leading to an unnatural look. Ticking the box also makes the sky way brighter. It's a tradeoff that has to be made for each individual picture. In the selection I posted above, a few have the box ticked and most don't.

Infrared photographic film that extends into UV the only true infrared photographic film was Kodak HIE which extended beyond 800 nm, but it is now no longer in production. There are currently only two IR films in Europe, Ilford and Rollei IR I superimposed the graphics of these two photographic films and a panchromatic with very extended sensitivity ... more than the IR ones ! I noticed that all do not exceed 750 nm the strange thing is that they are very sensitive in the ultraviolet (before 400 nm) they also go beyond 300 nm. The photos were taken with a 1956 Agfa Clack 6x9 cm (25 euro) with a single-lens lens (meniscus) with fixed focus and f11 aperture. LINK AGFA CLACK Rollei Infrared film developed in Rodinal (R04) 1+25 for 10.5 minutes The first photo was taken on a clear day from a hill in Verona. Top with red filter 25 ( 580 nm ) Bottom with Hoya R72 ( 720 nm) The view is towards the west, at the top you can see a piece of Lake Garda which is about 20 / 30 km away, the mountains in the background are about 60 km away; sharper with R72. The vegetation below is more real with 25A, fuzzy and clear but not white with R72. below the color panorama on two different days with Samsung The second black and white photo was taken yesterday afternoon in the black locust grove near the house, in the early afternoon with the sun filtering through the trees. With Hoya R72 (720 nm) and below with TSN575+ZWB2 (UV over 400 nm) I was amazed that the Rollei Infrared photographic film was able to see even the ultraviolet. in these two to note a greater sharpness of the IR photo in the far part, the UV one has a more precise focus at short distances (the meniscus has fixed focus f11 from 3 meters to infinity) Thanks for the comments... Antonio

Having used the S3 both in UV and visible, I was curious to see what it might do on the other end of the spectrum; but there were some challenges to overcome. The first order of business was to improvise a filter, but I could not easily have a mount modified the way I did for the UV filter. I obtained a small R72 disk from Edmund of approximately the right diameter. I photographed some of my existing filters in the IR to see which blocked IR the least and selected the best candidate. Without destructively modifying the filter, I placed the R72 disk on top of the existing glass and sealed it in position with Blu-Tack putty, which gave me a filter assembly of the right type without undue lateral leakage, for which I tested. Next I selected film. There are as far as I know only two films currently available (other than old discontinued products) that have IR sensitivity: the Rollei IR400 and the Film Photography Project Infrapan. The second of these is a bit of an enigma, as the FPP which sells this offers almost no documentation, leaving the user largely guessing about such things as speed, filtration, and processing--what is this stuff, anyway? Some inquiry online led to the conclusion that it may be repurposed Agfa Aviphot 400, an extended-red aerial photography film with an infrared tail on its response curve. It is odd-looking stuff, with a yellowish dye in the raw emulsion and no frame numbers or other margin markings of any sort. In the end, I decided that I would shoot these films with a working ISO of 6 and process them together in Microphen, which I had already tried for the first film. I shot a test roll of the Rollei, using the camera's faster exposure range and more open apertures, but I immediately ran into a focus-shift problem, and apparently a wrong-way shift at that. Shooting only at the minimum aperture (f/16) was the only way to work around this, which fortunately made the problem largely go away; but I was stuck with using the camera's slow speed range and exposure times from 1/8 second to 1 second. One has to take care, as even the slightest tap on the tripod during a slow exposure can create smear bars and spoil the image. Some sample frames with the Rollei film follow. The alert observer will note that I still struggle with a light leak on the left margin at times--a trip to the shop failed to resolve the issue completely. The FPP film was the second to be tested: The FPP proved a bit faster than the Rollei under the circumstances, and the negatives were a bit overexposed; a working ISO of 12 or 25 might have been a better match with this processing. Both of these films are contrasty, without tremendous exposure latitude. The FPP might be a bit more contrasty than the Rollei. Both of these films also struggle to produce a really clean Wood effect, even with favorable filtration; foliage often comes out various shades of dirty grey rather than the snowy white so easily seen with digital sensors (or with older IR films that had deeper IR reach.) I have tried to work around this somewhat in post-processing, but the truth is that digital sensors are responsive to a wider range of IR than any film ever was, rendering the absorption tail of chlorophyll in the 710-730 nm range much less important. The present films probably have relatively little response beyond 760 nm, although some sensitivity out to 820 is claimed. Unfortunately for the film photographer, the days of HIE or Efke 820 are gone forever. Indifferent quality control is yet another issue: emulsion pinholes and other apparent defects are far more common than would have been tolerated 40 or even 20 years ago. So is there really any point to this? Undoubtedly, if one took a modern (converted) mirrorless digital camera, and equipped it with, say, a Laowa 9mm lens with the suitable IR filter, that rig would almost certainly outperform what we see here by almost any metric (and the cylindrical projection naturally produced by the film camera could be easily duplicated from a rectilinear original via software.) So if one has such equipment or can afford that for panoramic photography, the answer would have to be no. If, on the other hand, one wishes to dabble in panoramic IR without spending thousands on gear, (or, for that matter, if you are one of the film diehards for whom anything digital is anathema) this might be a way to do it. It should be emphasized that these considerations do not apply to UV photography, as lenses such as the Laowa would not be expected to do well in UV.

A month after I shot my first B&W infrared photos I tried a roll of Kodak Ektachrome Infrared color film. It was 50 years ago this month (Sep 1972). Here's a few images from that roll. Kodak recommended using a Wratten #12 deep yellow filter for best results. This first image was taken without a filter. It is interesting that the magenta color of vegetation is similar to that obtained with a modern digital camera converted for infrared and used raw without color-balancing. Kodak Ektachrome Infrared film with a Wratten#8 yellow filter. Kodak Ektachome Infrared film with a Wratten#22 orange filter. Kodak Ektachome Infrared film with a Wratten#25 red filter and polarizer. Kodak Ektachome Infrared film with a Wratten#22 orange filter and polarizer. I used a variety of color filters on this first roll to see the what the different effects would be. Only later did I appreciate the familiar perspective of a blue sky that the yellow filters produced. Well, it's a false-color film anyways so may as well have fun. At the time I actually preferred the dark sky look obtained with red filters. Here's some artifacts from that time including the original Kodak Gelatin filters. Kodak Ektachrome Infrared specsheet & box with Gelatin filters. (Only box I could find is from the 1980s version of the film) Kodak Ektachrome Infrared film couldn't be processed at home as no E-4 processing chemicals were offered for consumer use. In later years when E-6 completely took over none of the local labs would do E-4. It had to be mailed off to Kodak for development until the mid-1990s when they ended support for the E-4 process. About that time Kodak released a new version of color infrared called Aerochrome Infrared that used an AR-5 process but could also be processed at home using E-6 chemicals. I believe Kodak discontinued that film in the mid-2000s. A few similar films from other manufacturers existed until about 2010 but I'm not aware of any IR color film made since that time.

LINK: https://mike-makes.com/2021/08/09/aerochrome-a-year-long-journey/ At that link there are (digitally scanned) film photos shown made with Kodak Aerochrome III Infrared Film 1443 which the photographer sourced from Russia. The $100 film was of course expired as would be any most Aerochrome film still in existence. The shots were made with an orange 056 filter. He cross-processed with C-41 rather than the suggested E-6. The photos are weirdly cool. For many photos the original digital scan is shown together with a slightly edited alternate color version. Enjoy!

[UV SAFETY] UV-C Light Is Dangerous NEVER look at a UV-C light. NEVER let UV-C light hit your skin or eyes directly or by reflection. UV-C light can cause: severe burns of the eyes and the skin, and DNA damage from broken chromosomes. When working with UV-C illumination, you MUST: cover up completely, wear head & eye protection, and have strong ventilation. While discussing in anothe rthread this idea come to me. Is it possible to record UV-C on film? Anybody tried? I mean: - Nikon F4 + B/W or color or slide film. - UV-Nikkor. - 4 x 25W low pressure mercury bulbs (those unprotected generating O3). - Problem with filtering, I can use Edmund 39319 "FILTER BP 254NM X 10NM UV OD4 50MM" but this is dichroic and very angle dependent - I can see world outside with my own eye, I think it is designed for lasers... My biggest concern would be to guess the exposure needed...

Seeing the recent discussion of lenses good for IR made me think of some unwanted but amusing lens artifacts I've recorded when using IR film. Not sure what the proper name for these are but I just call them axial internal lens reflections. When viewing the full frame image a line connecting the artifact and it's probable source is bisected by the exact center of the image. These were all taken by a Yashica Electro-35GS rangefinder camera with its Yashinon 45mm f/1.7 lens. I can't find any similar artifacts in straight visible spectrum images taken with this camera & lens. First, the forest faeries. The second one has the eerie effect of appearing to illuminate the ground around it. These were taken north of Flagstaff AZ in the 1970s. I didn't notice the apparitions until I got the film back from Kodak weeks later. Finally, the UFOs. This type of image is often cropped and presented as mystery sky objects. Sky buffs will recognize Scorpio rising in the background.

In the summer of 1972 I saw an article in Petersen's Photographic magazine about infrared photography that got me interested (see last pic). I needed a 35MM camera to use the available film so I found a used Yashica 35GS for about $50. It was a rangefinder camera and so well-suited for photography with an opaque filter. I couldn't afford a glass IR filter so I bought a couple of Kodak gelatin filters for infrared which cost about $3 each. It was 50 years ago this month (Aug 1972) that I shot the first roll so I thought I would post a few photos from it. These were taken in the Midwestern US where I grew up. As you can see the images are vignetted because of my rather large filter stack/sandwich. I used the UV and Skylight 1A filters that came with the camera to make a sandwich to hold the cut gelatin #87 filter. It was roughly equivalent to an IR720 or IR760 modern filter. The film was Kodak High Speed Infrared which required total darkness to load and process. I processed this myself in D-76 developer because I couldn't trust the photo labs to handle it properly. Kodak High Speed Infrared Spectral Response (Taken from Kodak publication P-9, 1970) Combining the spectral sensitivity of the film with my #87 filter probably gives an approximate capture spectrum of 750-920nm. Fifty years later I still have that magazine and what's left of the Kodak Gelatin filters I cut up. Petersen's Photographic Jun 1972, High Speed Infrared Film specsheet & Kodak IR Gelatin filters. After this first roll of film I was completely sold on IR photography and kept with it off and on for the next 50 years. About 10 years ago I discovered how easy digital infrared photography was (compared to film) and got interested all over again. Next month is my 50th anniversary of shooting color infrared and I'll post a few of those then.

Here are two screen shots from page 31 of the SB-140 Manual. I am wondering whether any of these film still exist today? UV Films Mentioned: Kodak Spectroscopic Type 103-O & Type 103-F Neopan SS Tri-X Technical Pan 2415 IR Films: Kodak High Speed Infrared Film 2481 Sakura Infrared 750 Kodak Echtachrome Infrared Film 2236

Since film and wet plate have been coming up a lot lately, have you all seen Lippmann photos? They are made by interference of light, like butterfly wing colors, by nanopatterning an emulsion on a glass plate in contact with a mirror. https://www.alternativephotography.com/lippmann-colour-photography/

The idea of shooting UV on film seems to be perhaps a bit controversial here, but I still like it. It may not be super practical or advantageous (at least in UVA), but I like the nature of b&w film and I have Foma made filmstocks available to me for quite cheap. I think flower pictures could be very interesting if recorded on an analog medium. Or even landscapes, anything. The one question is, how to focus? Obviously, film cameras have no live view and I for sure can't see UV. Is there any rule I could use to focus on objects with at least some accuracy? Thanks.

So today I've been browsing FotoŠkoda, a local camera gear seller, they also sell films. I ran into this weird french enterprise which claims to be "world's smallest film company". They make several interesting filmstocks. https://filmwashi.com/datasheet/Z_en.pdf Washi Z 400, which is sensitive up to 750nm and has the iso of 400. https://filmwashi.com/datasheet/S_en.pdf Washi S 50 which has extremely high contrast, sensitive up to 620nm, ISO of 50, they claim that this one is used to capture sound, you read that right, sound. I have no idea how that works. And the one that intrigues me the most. https://filmwashi.com/datasheet/F100_en.pdf Washi F 100 which is only sensitive up to 575nm and is an xray film. I wonder if it would be a good idea to use this one for UV photos. I would like to try to do that. Best thing about this one is that it's just not sensitive to infrared so I could do some wacky things with it without fearing leakage. Maybe something like taking several hour long UV exposures at night to see what comes out. I have several other B&W filmstocks in my fridge but I'm not sure how good those would be. I have some ADOX CMS II PRO which is out due to it's high contrast, which would make it impossible to nail exposures, I also have some Ilford PAN 400. Alternatively I have been considering getting a roll of Fomapan 400 or Ilford HP5+. I picked HP5+ for it's insanely low contrast and under/overexposure tolerance and Fomapan because it's very cheap here. The Fomapan however is quite panchromatic so I might have to start blocking IR which would make the whole thing less effective and would defeat the purpose of using film imho.

I got my Nons Fuji instax mini film camera last month and finally had a chance to test it out for UV. With Pentax UAT lens wide open (f4.5) I got a great photo at 1 second with ISO 800 (what instax film is fixed at) on my Olympus Em1mk1 full spectrum converted camera This is same ISO 800, f4.5 UAT 1 second shutter speed on Nons camera: Its about 1 or 2 stops less sensitive. My lights were 2 UVB bulbs, which are bad for UVA with the Baader venus u filter, which I used. But if any other dye would pick up the deeper UV I wanted to know. So in a pinch it could be a fun and different UV look. The Nons camera is available to purchase here: https://nonscamera.com/ The kit lens isn't so good into UV, maximum about 380nm if even that. Its very blue white balance when I tested it. But works very well on the camera.

Did anybody try to make UV photos on film? I wonder how it would perform? I can take Nikon F4, load some film (but which kind - I assume some B/W are most sensitive to UV) I can focus On D600 from a constant distance, say 3m - see what exactly needs to be set on the lens for a constant aperture, ISO, exposure (just check this on digital). Then I can mount Nikkor 50/1.8 AF-D + Kolari UV-pass on F4, use the same settings and shoot few photos with exposure compensation say: -2, -1, 0, +1, +2. Does it make sense, what should I expect?

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Investigating the wide-angle issue in UV photography can lead in some curious directions. Long ago, before Pierre Angénieux pioneered the retrofocus lens in the 1950s, medium and short wide-angle lenses were difficult to construct, often requiring impractically short film-to-lens distances. Most readily available optics of the day spanned a field of view of 60 degrees or less. But photographers as long ago as 1900 routinely took photographs spanning more than 110 degrees, and often even a complete 360-degree circle. How did they do it? The answer is rotating-lens cameras--and an explanation will require a brief dive into history. The rotating-lens camera was pioneered as long ago as the 1880s, and production models began to become available around 1900. Two designs emerged: the swing-lens camera and the slit-scan camera. In the swing-lens camera, the film is held stationary in a semicircular channel behind the lens, which is mounted on the inside of a pivoting drum with a slit behind the lens acting as the effective "shutter."|The lens carriage rotates through a wide angle, producing an image on the film from 110 to 150 degrees in width. A prominent early example was the Kodak Panoram; later examples are the KMZ Gorizont/Horizon, the Panon Widelux, and the Kamera-Werkstätten Noblex. Slit-scan cameras are slightly different: the lens is rigidly attached to the camera, and the entire camera pivots on a bearing while a mechanism feeds the film past the slit at a carefully matched rate. these cameras are capable of recording a full circle and some can even execute multiple consecutive revolutions, almost becoming a sort of omnidirectional motion-picture camera. Prominent examples of this type have included the Kodak Cirkut, the Globus Globuscope, and the Seitz Roundshot. (For a more complete timeline of this subfield of photography, you may check here.) Both these camera types produced what became known as a panoramic image, a peculiar sort of image which is rectilinear in the vertical direction but has fisheye characteristics in the horizontal direction. Can panoramic images be made in UV in a single exposure? It looked worth a try, but one consideration one runs up against is that rotating-lens camera technology for the most part never made the jump to the digital era. There are various reasons for this. For one thing, digital stitching technology to assemble a panoramic image out of a series of ordinary photos is now ubiquitous and cheap, even to the point that some smartphone apps can handle the task. For another, some modern rectilinear wide angle lenses can now (in visible and IR) cover angles up to 135 degrees, actually exceeding the range of some of the old swing-lens cameras, and making this design largely irrelevant--if a panoramic image is still desired, a simple geometric remapping can create one from a rectilinear image. Finally, the future of immersive digital imaging seems to lie in a different direction--that of the concurrent multi-camera array, such as the Panono (and perhaps someday someone will send one of these to LifePixel or MaxMax, but that day is not yet.) The digital equivalent of the slit-scan camera is called the rotating-line camera and is today largely a tool for surveillance and industrial use, not a consumer product. (One intrepid hobbyist, however, has built his own.) So realistically, to do this it was necessary to shoot film. That raised the question of acquiring equipment to do so. I quickly learned that most panoramic cameras have two drawbacks that discourage casual experimentation. First, due to collectors, many of them have become quite expensive, sometimes insanely so. Checking Ebay for price references, a Kodak Cirkut in working order will cost you $3,500--even though the film for it is no longer available! A working Globuscope is almost as bad, going for almost $3,000. An Alpa Roto recently sold for over $4,000, and one lesser-known and rare camera recently was listed for $11,000. A Widelux in working order will set you back at least $800, and a Noblex will be over $1,000. Only the Gorizont/Horizon line has stayed somewhat less expensive, normally in the $200-300 range, still too dear for a casual experiment when I do not even know if the lens transmits UV. The other drawback is that these cameras are mechanically complex and tend to be temperamental, not at all forgiving of neglect or poor maintenance; worse, many camera shops do not even know how to service one (though I hear that one business in Tempe, AZ has made a specialty of this.) So a camera someone found in Grandpa's closet on a back shelf may not turn out to be such a good deal, even if the price seems right. Since almost all of these cameras are out of production, parts availability may be a big problem. But a potential solution presented itself: the Lomography Spinner, which appears to be a reboot/near-clone of the Corrales Spinshot of the 1990s, available from lomography.com for about $50, and I took the risk of obtaining one: It is a simple plastic slit-scan camera which comes with a surprisingly stout, heavy lens hood which turns out to be the rotational counterweight. It has a 25mm lens--but made of what? If it turned out to be polycarbonate (cutoff 390nm) I would be hosed. Acrylic (375nm) would be almost as bad. So I ran a pinhole test. Aligning the aperture proved tricky, but I obtained a result, presented here as a composite of two images for reference: It turns out I need not have worried. The very pale yellow color means that this silly little fixed-focus lens is made of glass--and has the best bandpass of any 25mm full-frame lens I have heard of, rivalling the Steinheil Cassar-S. So images taken with this camera have the potential of recording almost the entire UVA gamut and perhaps even a sliver of UVB. Filters on this camera are mounted between the lens hood and the lens, on a 52mm thread. I do not have any UV filters that size, so I had to mount the Baader (49mm) or the 403 (55mm) sandwiched between stepper rings thus: This camera is designed to record full-circle images. To operate it, one pulls the string in the handle (as in one of those old talking dolls of my childhood) and releases it, whereupon the camera whips through a bit more than one revolution before coasting to a stop, resulting in a "shutter" speed somewhere between 1/125 and 1/250 second (according to the documentation.) We are given a choice of two apertures: f/8 (cloud icon) or f/16 (sun icon.) The next step was to load up with Ilford Delta 3200 and go shoot something. Even for many experienced photographers used to thinking in terms of stubby rectangles, operating this kind of camera is a bit of an alien head trip. One has to judge suitable scenes by the criterion, is there interesting subject matter in every direction? It is not sufficient to look in front of you. Rule of thirds? Forget it--if the camera is properly leveled, that horizon is going to be dead center no matter what. (If the camera is tilted, on the other hand, the result is a sinusoidal funhouse distortion effect that you may or may not want.) Particular attention must be paid to where you want the lens sweep to start--and that point may be behind you. There is no exact control over where the sweep stops. The default procedure, once a location is chosen, is to mount the camera on the tripod, aim the camera carefully at where the sweep is to start, level the camera carefully with the bubble level on top, crouch underneath the tripod to get yourself out of the frame, reach up, pull the string out, and release. I can only imagine what onlookers might have thought I was doing. I chose the Biltmore estate as the place to try this all out, hoping that I might find some masses of flowers with distinctive UV patterns to include in the shots. But that was not to be--the dogwoods were already almost bloomed out, and it was too early in the year for Rudbeckia. Most of the gardens had not been planted for the summer yet, and aside from some scruffy tulips in one spot, there was not much in this department. So I contented myself with a few general landscape-type shots, trying both f/8 and f/16 as well as both filters. After processing the film in Microphen for 9 minutes with motor agitation at 20C and the rest of a typical B&W processing routine, the negatives were revealed, and looked reasonable, for the most part, except for some minor blemishes that might have been a processing fault on my part. . The f/8 aperture provided slightly better exposure, whereas there seemed not to be a great difference in sharpness between the images taken at the different apertures. I do not think this was due to focus shift, as nearby features were no sharper than the most distant. This lens is no Zeiss Distagon, and there is only so much one can reasonably expect. If one examines the negatives closely with a magnifier, the blurring is readily apparent. After this stage, I ran into another issue: My good Nikon film scanner does not have a carrier appropriate for these weird, ungainly negatives and I was forced to fire up an old Epson flatbed that I had not used in several years which did have such a carrier. This latter machine has somewhat janky focus and tonal rendition, and my initial attempts at scanning were disastrous. Fortunately, with just the right parameter settings in VueScan and some aggressive massaging of curves in Photoshop, I was finally able to get something half-way presentable, if not exactly of professional quality. I chose a sepia treatment for historical reasons. Bear in mind that the following scans do not quite do justice to the negatives, which are both somewhat sharper than what you see here and have more tonal subtlety, especially in the shadows. The first image I present is taken on the front lawn of the Biltmore House, at f/8 with the 403 filter. The lawn is large, to be sure, but this view makes the 30,000 square meter namesake palace almost disappear in the immensity. If I must claim that UV did anything in particular here, specular reflections off the grass may have made the mowing patterns more prominent. The next photo I include shows some (partially) socially-distanced visitors relaxing on the upper terrace, taken I believe through the Baader filter at f/8. If one looks closely, mountains can be seen on the far horizon through the haze. The last two images were taken with the 403 filter, I think at f/16 (I am not sure the choice of filter makes much difference.) On the lower terrace, the distant landscape is a bit more apparent, as is an event tent that was being set up for the purpose, which shows fairly white in color, indicating a probable lack of pigmentation in the fabric. The greyness of the house is a real phenomenon; the stone is not terribly UV-bright. The final image was taken down the hill in the garden, and is compositionally my most successful, although it is marred by a couple of apparent belt-drive glitches that resulted in bands of streaking. So there you have it--the widest-angle UV pictures I have ever taken, and perhaps some of the widest anyone has ever taken. Admittedly, this kind of photography is probably best practiced sparingly--it could easily degenerate into a trite gimmick if overdone, and it would take real dedication and vision to make this sort of camera one's daily shooter. But in the mainstream Lomography community, such images (visible, not UV) have gained a small cult following. As film photography is not popular in the UV community, I do not expect to be inspiring any imitators; but I hope that this story has been at least enlightening and entertaining for the reader.

Today I chanced across my old, failed harddrive, which I had set aside in order to take some photos, and decided to give it a go. I used my usual cameras: VIS: Canon EOS 5DSR IR: Canon EOS 6D, converted to 700 nm FS+UV: Canon EOS 6D, converted to full-spectrum As lens I used the EL-Nikkor 80mm f/5.6, set at f/16 throughout. Most of the photos are at ISO 100, only the UVIIRF is at ISO 800, and the UV with UV-LED is at ISO 200. For the UVIIRF I still had to use 30s as exposure time. As is evident from the shadows, I didn't put the torches or the flash on a tripod but handheld them, so the angles are not completely the same, which I don't expect to make any real differences. What do you think? I find it interesting how the circuit paths appear and disappear, and I'll definitely have to check out the glowing bits in the UVIIRF. First, VIS-camera, room lights (Standard Osram LEDs with 2700 K) for lighting: Next, VIS-camera, Nemo-torch (365nm): : FS-camera, without filters, room-lighting (Standard Osram LEDs with 2700 K): FS-camera, without filters, full-spectrum flash (Yongnuo VN560III with the cover removed): FS-camera, without filters, Nemo-torch (365nm): FS-camera, UV-filter by Makario, full-spectrum flash(Yongnuo VN560III with the cover removed): FS-camera, UV-filter by Makario, Nemo-torch (365nm): IR-camera, room-lighting (Standard Osram LEDs with 2700 K): IR-camera, full-spectrum flash (Yongnuo VN560III with the cover removed): IR-camera, Nemo-torch (365nm): IR-camera, LED-torch 850nm: IR-camera, LED-torch 940nm:

Being initially inspired by this work here: https://www.ultravio...__fromsearch__1 And OlDoinyo questions to get below 300 nm first posted here: https://www.ultravio...ch__1#entry5404 I was able to figure out a way to adapt my 85mm UAT lens to my Pentacon 6 film camera. Using a macro reverse mount to 67mm, then 67mm to 52 step ring and a 52mm to M42 adapter I can mount the lens. The focus is macro only but works with 6 inch working distance from the front of the lens. Interesting with a M42 to C-mount adapter I was also able to mount the 60mm KSS lens and get a 3 inches of working distance from the front of the lens. But now the hard part. What are the recommended settings and films for UV? As This is shooting blind, and waiting a week to develop it, if I have time. In searching the web and forensics sites it seems people recommend Kodak Tmax 400 as the best film. And what I have found is they say its runs at ISO 10. In a report by Dr. Robin Williams and Gigi Williams entitled "Ultraviolet, Infrared, and fluorescent photography" reprinted from “Medical and Scientific Photography” - An Online Resource For Doctors, Scientists and Students. I was able to find the following spectrum for Tmax 400: They also tested a whole bunch of BW films, from I don't know when (possibly the 1980's) and found that Ilford HP5+ was the fastest, being 4x the speed of TMax 400. However it was not as sharp as TMax and TMax can be pushed. However, I don't believe everything in this study as their plot for available UV from the Sun shows significant amount at 200nm, which isn't true. Unless there was more UVC back in the 1970's and 1980's and recent pollution has blocked it (I am being sarcastic). I do believe this Kodak plot for TMax 400 from 2016: But it cuts off too early to know how good it would be in deep UV. The Ilford HP5plus from 2018 does not look too promising for deep UV imaging: However, most of the film I own is December 2009, expired Kodak Portra NC 160. Its plot from the New formulation (I can't find my NC or VC plots anywhere now) from 2016 is not very encouraging: I do have 2 rolls of Kodak TMax 400 Expired August 2010 and two rolls of my favorite black and white film (BW400CN) which is fake BW as you develop it using C-41 chemistry. But that is not enough for testing and photographing with. So I think I will try to shoot 254nm, 313nm and 365nm Using the 160 Portra. And see how it turns out. I will be at F8 most likely, So does anyone from the old film days recommend what an approximate shutter speed they used to see was? As in "I would shout outside and it was almost always a second". I did see this Night time thread with B&W shot for 5 minutes: http://www.ultraviol...oting-at-night/ And this discussion on using only Tungsten film, which sadly I don't have: https://www.ultravio...__fromsearch__1 But I don't see any shutter speeds indicated in the last one. I just want to know what to expect to bracket around. I have 13 rolls of the 160 Portra, so shooting a roll with 12 exposures to figure out the exposure is ok. I don't have that ability with my only 2 rolls of Tmax. I am hoping I can see something at 254nm, as that is what the UAT was used with back in the day. But I have been reading that newer films use a UV blocking layer. So that will hurt moving forward. Curious about any suggestions for starting out.

In the days when infrared photography was purely a film endeavor, one of the mainstays of the undertaking was Kodak High Speed Infrared Film, colloquially known by its code name 'HIE'. This monochrome film had well-known signature characteristics: a very coarse grain structure, a contrasty tonality which was described by its proponents as "otherworldly" (and by its detractors as "nasty" or similar epithets,) and, in the infrared, a strong halation around highlights due to light-piping of infrared in the emulsion and film base. A typical example of an infrared photo with this film is one I took about a decade ago, using the Olympus 35RD and a #093 filter: I have had a couple of rolls of this film , which was discontinued in 2007, lying around, some very expired and likely with little infrared sensitivity still remaining; but it occurred to me that perhaps the film could still be used for UV imaging, which is not dependent on the perishable IR sensitizers in the film. I loaded one roll, with an expiration date around 2000(!) into my Olympus 35RD, mounted the Baader U2 filter, and decided if HIE's signature characteristics would carry over into the UV realm. The film was developed in D-76 with motorized agitation for 11 minutes at 20C. Due in part to the film's age and condition, there was considerable base fog and some blotching in the emulsion; however, several images were obtained: The working ISO was very low, perhaps less than 10 in daylight, due in part to the mediocre UV bandpass of the 35RD's lens (see elsewhere for my test of it.) The limited bandpass also meant that the paint on the railroad cars was not rendered as dark as it would have been with a lens such as the Steinheil. The images are very grainy, although the reductions posted here do not show that very well. The tonality of HIE is well represented in these images. There is, however, no sign of the prominent halation that is a hallmark of infrared HIE images. This is not surprising, as ultraviolet light does not pipe well through emulsion or film stock, unlike infrared; and overall, there is considerably less "otherworldly" character to these images. (I could fake such an effect in Photoshop, but that was not the point of this exercise.) One also notes that the images, while reasonably sharp in the center, are quite soft at the corners; this may be due to chromatic aberration of the 35RD's lens. I have not noticed this before, but it is quite obvious in these photos. This has been an interesting investigation, and I may continue it at some point; if so, I think I will use my main film SLR rather than the little Oly, and I will use the Steinheil next time.

Hi all Do people have recommendations for UV Film photography? (Black and white) I'm planning to test out on 35mm and move up to either 120 or 5x4 (if I can find a suitable lens) so hopefully something still in production and easily obtained I wondered what film stock is the best bet and how to rate/metre it. I've read a pretty basic test online that suggests HP5+ is the most sensitive to UV but that Tmax pushed to 3200 gives better results I can use flash too

Hi all Thanks for the opportunity to join. I am currently busy with a photography project on fruit and nut trees. More specifically I am looking at pecan and was wondering if the pecans in the husk would be more visible using in the UV spectrum. I then want to use this in combination with my drone, to take video's and stills from the air Keep well Gerhard

This is my first test. I understand now that I should be using black and white film? Does anyone want to rent me their Baader or Schott UG11X? I am doing a single project w UV and would need filter for approx 2 weeks. Seems a little much to buy filter just for this use. Thoughts? This is my first test. Not sure what I have here. Anyone else have interpretations of what is/isn't working?