Good day from South Africa

[Jody Barends]

Hi everyone, thanks for allowing me to join this forum. I am a herpetologist from South Africa interested in investigating biofluorescence in snakes and other reptiles. Ideally I would like to learn about the sorts of equipment needed to properly photograph animals under UV light. This is very new to me but I have done a fair bit of reading up on the topic. I use Nikon gear for my photos.

[Nate]

Welcome Jody! Looking forward to seeing reptiles photographed. 

[colinbm]

Welcome Jody, this will be very interesting to see.

[Andy Perrin]

Oh that should make for some interesting images! Welcome to the forum.

[lukaszgryglicki]

Hi, nice to see you there.

You will basically need

1) A converted camera (you said you have NikoN) - either full spectrum (more popular) or monochome (you loose colors but gain sensitivity, more expensive).

2) A lens (there are many):

- can be some old "standard" glass like for Nikon-FR or M42 (you loose infinity focus, but I assume you want close ups - snakes etc.) - those are "standar lenses". Can be found quite cheap.

- can be non-helicoid lens (enlarger lenses) - they usually have better UV transmission, for example EL Nikkors. You will need mount adapter for them. Also can be found quite cheap. You focus by either adapter or by moving camera closer/farther to the subject.

- can be a dedicated like UV-Nikkor. Expensive.

3) A filter - there are many options possible.

- can be dedicated like Kolari UV-pass, UVRoptics UV filters and many more.

- can be stack of UV and IR passing glass (like Houa U-340, U-360 etc.) + IR blocker like S8612, UVR optics IR blocker, many other chinease ones.

- can be some specialistic filter for deeper UIV like Omega, EdmundOptics and so on - expensive.

4) You may also need UV light source (I use sunlight).

- can be UV-flash

- can be sun (good down to 310nm but not really deeper).

- can be UV dides (a lot options)

- can be low pressure mercury lamp (for UV-C) *dangerous* and you need very best 1, 2, 3 to see it.

 

Hope that helps.

 

[colinbm]

@lukaszgryglicki Jody is interested in investigating biofluorescence. For starters she just needs a normal un-converted camera !

[lukaszgryglicki]

How could I miss this *biofluorescence* - OK then you need UV diode and a normal camera, sorry just wanted to help and overlooked that you'll photograph in visible.

 

[dabateman]

I agree that mainly you will just need a stock regular camera, whatever is your favorite lens and than get special specific filters to isolated whatever fluorescent region you want.

But I think reptiles may have something in the IR range as well. So getting a full spectrum converted camera,  may not be a bad idea. Then test UV induced IR fluorescence.