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#1
Marcus Rowland

Marcus Rowland

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Just to introduce myself - Marcus Rowland, retired lab technician and author (mostly of role playing games), resident of London, UK. In the seventies and early eighties I did some part time work for Morgan Cameras, a London used camera dealer, so I've seen a lot of strange gear in my time, especially at the vintage end of things. My main interests are scientific and nature photography, macro and micro, occasional pictures for Wikipedia, etc.

 

As of next month I will have been a Nikon D50 user for ten years, before that my main camera was a Canon F1. Since Canon digital cameras use a different lens mount to the F1 I had to sell most of my lenses and switched to Nikon when I went digital. I'm sticking with the D50 because I mostly take photos for web sites etc. and rarely want really high resolution, also because it's reasonably sensitive to infra-red with the right filters and I like messing around with infra-red photography occasionally (though I would LOVE someone to come up with a digital SLR that shifts the whole spectrum to emulate infra-red Ektachrome!) A final reason is that it's cheap and relatively expendable if I get mugged, drop it in a canal, or something...

 

The lens I probably use the most is a Tamron 28-300mm XR, not the most modern lens but it's built like a tank and my go-to lens for eBay listings and general photography, and still has the option of manual aperture control. I've also got a Nikon AF-S 35 1.8, Nikon AF-S 18-55 3.5-5.6 VR, a Lensbaby 12mm fisheye (not the full frame one, the cheaper version for their interchangeable element system), a generic manual 500mm F8 lens, and usually one or two others - I buy and sell a lot of cameras and lenses on eBay, and tend to keep the interesting ones for a few months before I sell them on. For example, I've just finished playing with an Itorex f40 (really) 50mm lens which is a sort of predecessor of Lensbaby and "lens in body cap" designs, and have just begun using a weird 135mm f2,8 bellows-mounted lens for macro photography. And I just picked up an SB-25 flash in a car boot fair (US = swap meet) today, I'll be playing with that and deciding if it's better than the Jessops flash I currently use if I want extra power.

 

My most recent photo - a cactus, about 0.5x with the bellows lens.

 

bellows_4_zpsii6fqwac.jpg

 

Hope that wasn't too boring...



#2
Brian

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Welcome to the forum.

 

Infrared Ektachrome: was used mostly for the scientific market. Digital sensors extend farther into the Near-IR. I have the first digital IR camera sold by Kodak, the DCS200ir. Called them up and asked them to make it. I can still remember the engineer at Kodak laughing and telling me that they spent years getting rid of IR so that it would look more like film, and I wanted them to undo it all. They called back a couple of months later, said they would do a run of 50 CCDs without the IR filters, other labs called asking for the same thing.

 

17007670886_a5c91a81f9_o.jpgI1015873 by fiftyonepointsix, on Flickr

 

Above is with a Leica M8 and Orange filter, custom raw processor that I wrote. Orange filter leaves Blue channel sensitive to IR only, raw processor equalizes that channel with the other two, interchanges Blue and Red. "Kind of like" the color shift in IR Ektachrome.

 

Below is with a Coolpix 950 with the IR blocking filter removed, then a Magenta filter used:

 

15924240840_6241134d7a_o.jpgir_1 by fiftyonepointsix, on Flickr

 

You might look for a full-spectrum converted camera, and play with color filters. Use Orange to Block Blue- that will give a mix of IR and Visible, "kind of like" E-IR.

 

I scanned in an old article on E-IR, Tyler Thornton:

 

https://www.flickr.c...157649663037268

 

My inspiration for trying the color filters with the full-spectrum cameras.



#3
Marcus Rowland

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The trouble was the idiots who were using infra-red to get photos through clothing - some fabrics are transparent or translucent in infra-red, the manufacturers received so much flack that they had to "improve" the filters, which is why (for example) Sony stopped making nightshot cameras that could actually film or take photos in this spectrum, rather than switching to visible light as soon as you pressed the shutter button.

 

Here's one I made earlier....

 

800px-Sony_IR_01.JPG

 

Sony Cybershot DSC-VI camera in night shot mode, 920nm filter, neutral density filter.



#4
Brian

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There are several companies that will replace the IR blocking filter with a clear cover glass, I have an Olympus EP2 that is converted.It was not too expensive.

 

Fuji will sell a full-spectrum camera for scientific use.

 

Here is a shot with the DCS200ir, with R60 filter.

 

15924959239_245f222d63_o.jpgMTVERN7 by fiftyonepointsix, on Flickr

 

This is a monochrome camera. $12,400 in 1993. 80MByte internal SCSI disk to store 50 images. Wahoo! It was amazing tech back then.



#5
Marcus Rowland

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Nice - I've seen reviews of that camera but never got to play with one, even when I was working in education.

 

I've thought about getting a modified camera, or getting my D50 modified and replacing it with something better for general use, but I inevitably find other uses for the money. Unfortunately the pound has tanked at the moment and all of the people doing conversions are US based, as far as I know.

 

later edit - I forgot to say that I did try this conversion on a Fujifilm bridge camera - it had a broken flash so I thought I'd try this since it probably wasn't worth trying to sell it. It sort of worked except that it wasn't quite in focus and both LCD screens refused to work afterwards, which made focusing and aiming just a little difficult... Which is why I won't be trying it on a DSLR!