Tuesday, 7 July 2015

4K Ultraviolet Video

Unfortunately it's just me in a park. But you get the idea. The Lumix Fz1000 is fairly sensitive to UV light and it can be extracted even in a non-RAW movie format. Here I've used a 62mm MC FL-W filter and then removed all but the lowest blue in After Effects and Lightroom.



And with RAW not only can you have ordinary UV coal-miner photos of people faces but I've managed to create a weird filter that can solarise some tonal ranges for a truly strange effect.



Friday, 26 June 2015

The Lumix Fz1000 is UV sensitive!

The Lumix Fz1000 is ultraviolet sensitive! Just like many good old black and white film cameras used to be. I am currently experimenting with it and will upload photos AND VIDEO very soon.
Exciting stuff (for this nerd).

Jab

Excited Nerd in UV

Thursday, 19 March 2015

CELESTIALS

Taking handheld shots of celestial objects usually takes a tripod and a camera hooked up to a telescope. But the Lumix Fz200 allows you to zoom all the way WITHOUT losing it's speedy advantage. That is it can maintain f2.8 all the way.

How does it work? Don't know, don't care.

Add the telephoto extender (DMW-LT55) and you can take shots of the mountains of the moon standing on a street corner. Or if it's a nice day and you have an ND10000 filter (actually quite cheap), you can take pics of sunspots!







Even if you can only take grainy shots, as you would get with any camera that's NOT the Fz-200 you can take multiple handheld shots of the same thing and stack them. Here I took 8-10 grainy photos and used PhotoAcute to enhance the detail. You can also use Photoshop's "Load Files into Stack" command.




Some other random celestial events, taken with the Fz-150 unfortunately.




Wednesday, 18 March 2015

650 - 900nm Is Where I Want To Live

My favourite photon wavelength.

Taken with the full spectrum Lumix and filtered for extended infrared. More info on that in the equipment page.















Sunday, 15 March 2015

Hanging out down in UV (330nm - 400nm)

The UV range is a strange place to be. And one of the hardest to capture.
On my modified full spectrum Lumix I needed to have a number of filters.
First a 'hot mirror' that block all IR rays. Also, a very specific piece of black glass that
blocks visible light only. This glass also lets IR through so that's why I need the hot mirror too.
I couldn't find the glass in lens for so I ordered it from a scientific company.
I got a 2 inch square piece of glass that I hold over the lens when taking the pic.
http://www.hoyaoptics.com/color_filter/uv_transmitting.htm

You also need a very powerful UV source and in these pics the sun volunteered.

Even with both of those filters I was getting lots of colour information too so,
in Lightroom I had to alter the temperature until I go the classic UV face effect.

UV faces are not pretty. Nearly every freckle, scar or other damage to your skin
from the last few years will show. Most people look like they've been working down
a coal-mine and age seems to be amplified.

I wasn't sure if I was actually capturing UV only or something else at first but
I was able to confirm it using patches of sun block which showed up on my
my experiment but were not visible to the eye.



I really don't have any visible freckles. 





My girl : white as white can be.

My friend Ian-John had a beard for 2 years. He had shaved it off weeks before this pic but you can still see its legacy here.


Models come off the best. But I'll give her a few more years and try again :)

Because of the set up and post processing needed I found it impossible to do UV video which is a pity. It is something rarely seen. But here it's beautifully done by Thomas Leveritt, this video went viral for a while so you may have already seen it. Also, his set up is a lot less shoddy than mine!




Wednesday, 11 March 2015

SKIN DEEP

One of my favourite aspects of infrared is that it goes deep beneath certain surfaces. With a really strong source, i.e the sun, some rays can go a centimetre into the skin before being reflected. The result is truly eerie.








Mosquito vision :)



Something I also noticed is that the effect is really strong on caucasian skin but almost non
existent with Asian skin under the same conditions.




Thursday, 26 February 2015

THE NAKED EYE : MACRO/MICRO

Just an Fz200 Lumix and a Raynox lens attachment. And that's not even at 100% zoom.
More soon...




Iris Muscles
The closest I could go. 100% zoom with the Raynox and Fz1000 (the newer bridge Lumix)

Before the zooming begins

Tuesday, 24 February 2015

SMALL PORTFOLIO


See what can be achieved with a cheap modified camera.
Click the image for a small portfolio of my infrared work.

The kanji is pronounced JABU and is how the Japanese say my name.

http://tokyojab.500px.com/

Monday, 23 February 2015

BLOOD

The amazing FZ200 Lumix Camera, a Raynox lens attachment and a papercut.






FULL SPECTRUM LUMIX

I recently had a Lumix Lx7 converted to full spectrum by Spencer's Cameras*. With full spectrum cameras all internal light filters and hot mirrors have been removed leaving the camera sensitive to lightwaves between 340 and 1050 nm (approx). Technical filters are added to the front of the camera for each different type of shot and here is the camera's full range:


Visible Light (420-640nm)



Visible & Hydrogen Alpha (420nm to 660nm)



Full spectrum (330nm to 900nm)



Extended Infrared (650nm to 900nm)



Standard Infrared (720nm to 900nm)


Deep InfraRed (850nm to 900nm+)


UltraViolet (340nm to 400nm)





The ultraviolet photo requires the most amount of filtering. For this I used sunlight as the UV source, a Hoya 330u, a Tiffen Hot Mirror and a Blue Color Filter. Even then the UV part of the raw image is only a small portion that needs to be separated out.

With the UV exception all other photos were taken with a single filter with no adjustments other than the white balance on the camera.




*It's worth noting that Spencer's Cameras have converted cameras for use by astronauts on the International Space Station! Their service is second to none and is very highly recommended,