Pure Mono

Branch IR

Originally uploaded by HotshotsSR1

I must admit that I have never used IR film before as I don’t have the time for it, maybe I should say I don’t have the patience but the fact of the matter is I’m not one for standing around taking lots of shots waiting for over 30 seconds for it close the shutter. I wish I did have the patience as IR shots can be the most stunning black and white photographs there are, the blackened sky and the white grass can make cracking high contrast scenes. For this shot I used the black and white command in CS3, on a screen there is not much difference and some people can find it hard to see if it was a real IR shot or not, but once it is in print there are a few signs to say which is rel and which is not, the most obvious is the white halo effect you can get on things. You can now convert digital cameras to IR to take real IR images, it is a case of taking your camera to bits and replacing the filters on the sensor, this enables you use the camera as normal by this I mean not standing around for over 30 seconds to take a shot but to use the camera as you would in everyday use, maybe when the D700 gets replaced with a newer model I will get the D200 converted to IR as there will be no point in me having three digital SLR cameras, although I’m sure my wife will argue the case that she should inherit the older models ha ha.

Originally uploaded by HotshotsSR1

For adding atmosphere to a photograph if there is no people in the shot I think that a bit of mist goes a long way to add to the mood, this shot was not set up at all or even planned. My parents came to our house for dinner one night and it was quite sunny when they entered the house, a couple of hours later when it was time to go we got to the front door and it was very dark, not only was it very dark but it was also very misty, not only was it dark and misty but is was also raining very lightly and as soon as I seen it I just knew I had to take a shot, I quickly ran upstairs and grabbed the D700, it was very cold and wet so I didn’t want to stay out long with my gear so I upped the ISO to 6400 and set the aperture to F/2.8 and widened the lens to 28mm, the reason I widened the lens was because you get a longer hyper focal distance the wider the lens so shooting at F/2.8 will not be much of a problem for the depth of field. The hyper focal range of the settings I used were a bit like this, I was 20 feet from the subject so the near limit was about 12 feet and the far limit was about 58 feet, so after a little bit of mathematics in my head (way to much info to type in this post I may write a tutorial on the subject at a later date) I worked out that the hyperfocal distance will have been around 30 or 31 feet this was enough to keep the shot in focus for the length of the alley. The shutter speed was 1/50 but to get a faster speed I would have had to up the ISO which would have added more grain to the shot so I leaned on the fence and stood as solid as possible to avoid camera shake.