Parasopubia sp.

[Shamali]

Khalatkar, S.D. (2022) Parasopubia sp. H.-P. Hofm. & Eb. Fisch. (Orobanchaceae). Flowers photographed in visible and ultraviolet light.

 

Nagpur, Maharashtra, India

18 September 2022

Seasonal wildflower

 

Reference

1. Kew Names and Taxonomic Backbone (https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:60434253-2/images) 

 

Gear:  Sony a6000

 

Visible Light [Sony a6000 unmodified+ 90mm Macro lens, f/11 for 1/200 @ ISO 200 in Sunlight]

 

Ultraviolet Light [Sony a6000 modified + 35mm Kuribayashi-based lens, f/5.6 for 1/125 @ ISO 2500 with Baader UV-Pass Filter, using Kolari KV-FL1 Multispectral flash with UV flash cup]

 

[Shamali]

Hello people, 

I have been following many posts on this forum. After some suggestions about getting a UV Flash, I bought the KV-FL1 by Kolari Vision. But somehow I feel the images aren't up to the mark. I have zero post processing knowledge, I can just tweak the basics.

For the UV and Vis images, I have used a modified and unmodified camera respectively. As compared to the images posted by members here,. Y images seem quite off, lacking, and yes, they are unprocessed. 

Can someone help out here? 

 

[Andy Perrin]

The process should be something like this. You need a piece of PTFE (can be plumber's tape, but piece of virgin PTFE with a rough surface will have fewer problems with glare) to use for white balance. Put your UV filter on the camera. The UV filter or stack must be able to block all the IR too.

 

1) Use your PTFE to either do a white balance in camera or take a photo of your white balance target to use later on the RAW. It must obviously be using the same light source (flash, sun, whatever) as you will photograph the subject with. MAKE SURE NO CHANNELS ARE SATURATED. That's the biggest issue.

 

2) Shooting in RAW, take photos of your subject.

 

3) Afterwards, you must use a RAW converter that works with UV. Possibilities include PhotoNinja, Raw Photo Processor 64, Darktable, and some others.

One that does NOT work is Adobe Camera RAW. ACR will never give proper white balance in UV.

 

4) If  you took a separate white balance photo in step 1, use it to get the white balance in your converter and copy it to the other pics.

[Nate]

A few other things to add Shamali, is to use a tripod for UV, nail the focus in live view, use an lcd magnifier if you need to. Like Andy said, shoot raw, darktable is free, lots of videos on the tube how to use it. If you need more help using it, there's a dt FB page where you can ask questions.