Spring Sunshine

The last couple of lunchtimes have been absolutely beautiful with lovely warm Spring sunshine.  Time to dust off the IR camera again, as the soft muted colours seem to fit well with metallic modern architecture.

As an antidote to the stark concrete and aluminium,here's something a little more natural...

I need to revisit the daffodils before they start to die back.

Ladybower Interpretations

Further to Frances's recent blog post, I think the picture of Ladybower could be interpreted successfully in many ways.  Here are two more to add to the mix: a hard monochrome; and a soft, dreamy, colour version.

I think the second one is my favourite.

It's a Dog's Life

Spotted while walking to the Post Office this lunchtime.

Another attempt at playing with Silver Efex Pro 2.

Checker Board

I treated myself to an X-Rite Color [sic] Checker Passport at Focus on Imaging on Tuesday.  It's a very clever piece of kit indeed, and a huge amount of thought has gone into its design.  The first test for it was to make a proper camera profile for my Panasonic LX3, as I've never been truly happy with the "Adobe Standard" version provided with ACR and Lightroom.  Skies always used to have a cyan cast, and some reds were pushed towards yellow/orange.

Based on an experiment which took all of 2 minutes in the car park at work, the results are very impressive.  All I did was to photograph the passport in daylight, then process the image in the Lightroom plugin which came with the product.  Out pops a colour profile which can then be applied to other images, and I've included a selection here.  In all cases, the original (Adobe) profile is on the left; the new (X-Rite) profile is on the right.

The ColorChecker Passport in action

It's possible to make "joint" profiles from pictures taken under two completely different lighting conditions (e.g. daylight and tungsten).  According to the documentation, this should improve the performance further in the sense that the profile generated should work for a greater variety of source images.  It's also possible to make custom profiles for specific situations simply by including the passport in one of the RAW pictures taken under the same lighting conditions as the rest of the set.  This should help enormously in colour-critical jobs, such as photographing paintings or quilting/textiles, or locations with mixed lighting such as church interiors.

I'll report further when I've had a chance to experiment with my other camera bodies...

Experiments with Silver Efex Pro 2

I blame Ann for this (naturally) but I downloaded the demo version of Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 yesterday.  This lunchtime was spent watching a number of tutorial videos, followed by a decision to "have a go".  All the pictures below were taken at the Black Country Museum on a miserably cold, wet day in December 2009.  They are all full-frame shots (i.e. no cropping or rotation) and none of the B&W conversions took longer than 5 minutes to perform.  I have to say that I'm dead impressed so far, but then I haven't shelled out any hard-earned dosh yet.  I might have to, though, especially as version 2 has some superb features which make it much more flexible and easier to use than version 1. 

IR close to work

Camera Club duties have, again, taken their toll when it comes to my own photography since Christmas.  That's life, unfortunately.  I did have the chance to wander around with my new IR camera one lunchtime last week, however, and these are the results.

My office is just around the corner from Cambridge Airport, hence the picture above.

The "greasy spoon" caravan is just outside the Airport perimeter fence, and directly opposite a large Mercedes dealership.  Usually this means that there is no shortage of takers for its wares.  Because of the red filter in the IR camera, the "NO ENTRY" sign has been rendered almost invisible.  The second picture is a local "tyre, brake and exhaust" outfit, and the chap shown was simply basking in the early February sun.

The final four pictures are of the Mercedes dealership, which has just had a shiny new aluminium cladding fitted - presumably as this will make people spend even more on their outrageously expensive cars.  Interestingly, the flags in the last shot genuinely were blue; but then so was the sky.  That's one of the things I love about IR photography, as it's not always possible to predict the outcome.

Barrington in the Sun

For the first time since my 20D was converted to Infra Red, the sun shone last Saturday afternoon.  Despite it being bitterly cold, Phil and I ventured to Barrington to see what was happening.  The thatched cottages around the Village Green looked extremely attractive in IR.

There was also a football match going on, and although IR isn't the obvious medium for sports photography, I thought I'd give it a go.  I particularly like "The Booking", possibly resulting from the fact that the language was as blue as the photographs, courtesy of most of the players...

The final picture is of Phil, who looked particularly fetching in his new blue and beige livery!

New Year Walk

One of my favourite haunts for walking Amber: Button End, between Harston and Haslingfield.  Still getting to grips with the IR camera, as I'm finding the metering a bit hit and miss.  Just like the old days with Kodak HIE film, in fact...

Not sure about pure mono or false-colour IR either.  Need to keep experimenting!

A trip to Wells

In an attempt to burn off some of the Christmas calories, we went to Wells-next-the-Sea on the Norfolk coast a couple of days ago.  It was dull, grey and gloomy, and the rain set in during the afternoon.  Nevertheless we had a great time on the beach, throwing a frisbee for the dog and photographing the beach huts.

I've never tried photographing the beach huts with a fisheye lens before, but the results are rather interesting.  Of course, there's always the possibility of a stray dog and frisbee finding their way into the shot, but that's just an occupational hazard...

I also took my newly converted IR camera with me, and rather liked the false colour images produced simply by correcting the white balance.  Something akin to a cross between split toning and hand colouring...

The final shot shows my daughter, Frances, taking a picture of something interesting on the beach - a cockle shell, by the look of it.  Perhaps she'll post it on her blog at some point?