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UltravioletPhotography

Yet another new member


bvf

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Hello, everyone.

 

My name is Bernard Foot. I live about 50 Km west of London, UK.

 

I've been active in UV photography for a couple of years, and am finally getting the hang of it.

 

I use a full-spectrum Canon EOS M, but am in the process of upgrading to a Sony a6000. (If you want to buy the EOS M, drop me a line!) I'm not up for paying 000's of £/$/€ for a specialised UV lens - even though I can see the fantastic results they offer from images on the UVP site. So I am using some of the golden oldies - a Kuribayashi 3.5/35mm (acquired from Iggy of these parts), a Cassar S 2.8/50mm (which has been my favourite for UV), and a recently acquired El-Nikkor 5.6/105mm (better for macro work).

 

For filters I have been using a U340/S8612 sandwich, but have just ordered a Baader U, which is allegedly in the post.

 

I guess like most people here I concentrate on flowers. Living in the UK we don't have the big, spectacular flowers that some of your geographies boast, so I concentrate on taking stereo photographs in close-up and macro of the internal structure of our common flowers (and some commercial flowers). After quite a lot of trial and error, that's now working well, but nature makes life difficult sometimes by giving some flowers the ability to move during the process and screw up my efforts. I love looking at the complex structure of the flowers that stereo brings out, and the ability to "fly around" inside the flower.

 

I do this with both visible and UV. The visible photography gives the more beautiful colours, of course, but UV often brings out structural detail that doesn't appear in the visible shots.

 

Does anyone else on UVP do any stereo or macro work?

 

I got the full-spectrum camera for IR, but have ended up spending my time and money at the UV end of the spectrum. For me IR is interesting for landscapes, but boring for flowers and plants - everything just comes out white (or whatever colour the white balancing is providing).

 

I've used the UVP site since I started in UV as a source of information, so I thought it was high time I got a bit more involved.

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Welcome to the forum Bernhard.

 

I am looking forward to seeing some of your work and learn more about your equipment and methods.

It sounds very interesting.

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Andy Perrin

Hi! Welcome.

 

I do the occasional flower, but I mostly do multispectral pics of antiques, fields, some landscapes, and old signage ("ghost signs"). Also computational analysis of them to bring out additional information from combinations of the images.

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Welcome,

I am mostly into macro and close up photography. I have only briefly tried stereo. My problem is software side, although I have acquired many packages. I rarely use them, resulting in printing, showing and distributing mainly the straight out of camera images. But this does challenge me to get better in camera and the hope one day I will process some of my favorites.

I look forward to seeing and reading how you take your stereo images. I am already guessing you don't use two matched cameras, but rather a calculated difference between shots. That must change between UV and visible to get the same stereo view based on UV focal shift.

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Yes, I take two sequential shots. Focussing for UV is a slight issue because you can't really see anything on the camera. But because I use focus-stacking to get high-quality images with all the depth if field I need I don't need to accurately focus on any specific part of the subject - just take a series (of up to 100 or so shots) which focus on different planes of the subject. So I just need to get the initial shot approximately right, which I do from the visible view with a bit of tweaking based on experience, and then do some trial shots until I've got the right starting point. Then keep doing the sequence of re-focussed shots for the focus stack, viewing the images on the screen until nothing is sharp any more.The focus-stacking software then combines the sequence of images into one picture that is sharp across the whole subject.I see that some other UVP correspondents use focus stacking as well.

 

For focus stacking software I use Zerene - brilliant, easy, but not free. In terms of 3D software, I use Stereo Photo Maker, which is brilliant, easy, - and free.

 

I'll do a brief write-up and provide some examples in the Ultraviolet & Multispectral Photos section, although there will be a couple of problems viewing the images:

  • you'll need red/cyan anaglyph stereo specs. (a few dollars on ebay/Amazon)
  • the limitation that UVP impose on image size means that you will get only a very limited experience - you won't be able to zoom into the image and wander round the inside of the flower,

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Hi, Ulf.

 

I tried it once a couple of years ago (not for macro) and wasn't too impressed. But perhaps I'll put some effort into it next time I do a focus stack and investigate it again.

 

I can see how you can create an impression of depth from a focus stack, but can't believe you can get the full 3D effect from a single viewpoint. But I'll give it another go - I've been wrong before!

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With really shallow DOF it can work well.

I used microscope lenses and a rather big magnification when I tried.

 

If it shall work well each stack image must have a very local plane of sharpness.

I do not think it will work for non macro without some monster lens with a big front element.

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Ulf - I had a go with the Zerene synthetic stereo option. Had some success with a non-UV, non-flower subject. But when I tgried with a vouple of new UV flower sequences I made today I get results like this:

post-245-0-60057600-1556655722.jpg

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Andrea B.
Bernard, I was talking to you on other topics and forgot about a formal welcome. Welcome to UVP !! I hope you will enjoy our little website and find help with any questions.
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