While crossing the junction between Desa Sri Hartamas and Sri Hartamas, I found the perfect prop for a nice long exposure shot. This wasn’t the effect I wanted, but the dude waiting there was cool. This effect was brought to you by Manual mode with 10 second exposure, F8.0, ISO 50, and a circular polarizer to drop it one stop.

And this, a successful attempt at the effect – same settings, but I changed to a 15 second exposure because I kept miscounting how long the green light would stay on. I could actually get green, yellow and red in a 6 second exposure, if I took the picture 2 seconds before it turned yellow, but I was lazy to wait (having miscounted a few traffic light cycles before), so I cheated and did a 15 second one so that the chances of me getting a green-yellow-red shot were higher. Pictures were also darkened to add drama.

If you want to do this same effect, I suggest you find a junction which switches lights fast, like a small T-junction out of town. It would help to have a railing or a power supply box to use as a makeshift tripod. Better still, zoom in on a traffic light for artistic effect.

Once again, yet another photography experiment. This time: What is the aperture range of a human eye?

I took the average naked human eye, without any contact lenses, perfect 20/20 vision. Aye, it was I!

Left: In the darkness, my iris opened, making my pupil wider. I flashed to take a picture. The aperture was calculated by measuring the diameter of my iris (109 pixels on the original image) and the diameter of my pupil (63 pixels). 109 divided by 63 gave an aperture of F1.73.
Right: I pointed a table lamp at my face and took a picture without flash. This was F4.48. Thus, I could conclude that my range was approximately 3 stops.

What about shutter speed? It is said that humans can only really distinguish up to 30 frames per second.

Fazri got himself a Panasonic Lumix FZ30, and a bagload of accessories. We then proceeded to combine forces and deck out our old Canon Powershots.

With this on his Powershot A95, we felt the weight of a digital SLR camera.

My Powershot A520 was smaller, making the lenses/filters look even more obscene!

From outside: 58mm 2x telephoto lens; 52mm to 58mm step up ring; Fazri’s 52mm Hoya circular polarizer, Fazri’s 52mm Hoya R72 infrared filter, Albert’s 52mm Hoya R72 infrared filter, Albert’s 52mm Hoya 25A red filter, Albert’s 52mm Raydawn circular polarizer, our respective camera 52mm lens adapters and finally our cameras. The effect would be the same as a zoomed infrared filter anyway.

What do you get when you put two circular polarizers facing each other? An almost black, trippy infrared-like effect. Turning the dials would change the colors of the lights!

Whee, more photographical geeking out!

I bought the Canon LA-DC52F lens adapter for my camera (the black tube). It allows me to attach a 52mm filter in front of my camera for special effects, like this Hoya 25A red filter, with two negative strips cut to fit the shape inside:

This was way better than my previous attempts at holding the negatives in front of the lens every time.

The red filter darkens skies and increases contrast (the red channel is more contrasty in most pictures). With the negatives behind it, I could make prettier infrared pictures (this was not color-adjusted):

I then bought the Hoya R72 infrared filter and put it in front of the lens adapter, followed by the red filter. (Putting the infrared filter in front of red filter would be redundant because there is nothing left for the red filter to uh… filter!)

(Picture courtesy of smashpOp‘s Panasonic FZ5 camera. I zoomed 12x on macro mode to make the lens look less big.)

This was a sunny morning, 7:45am.

For both, white balance was set to custom, pointed at the leaves.

I then did a bedroom lab experiment with a infrared-laden tungsten bulb:

For complete geeking out, click here to see a chart of filters in different combinations. 2RI, for example, means light passes through 2 black negatives, the red filter, then the infrared filter. The number below represents the shutter speed the camera used in P mode, ISO 50, manual focus, auto white balance. The reference picture above had a shutter speed of 0.005 seconds; thus, the red filter blocked 1.66 steps, 6.66 steps for anything with the 2 negatives (I didn’t know how to make sense of this), 6.33 steps with filters without negatives, and 5.33 steps for 1 negative. None of this made sense to me; however, it was obvious that 2 negatives gave a diffuse/fogging effect. Therefore, if you don’t mind the fogging effect, film negatives can safely be used instead of the expensive infrared filter. Also, stacking negatives with infrared filters was pointless as it did not affect the exposure.

I’ve been out shooting, with the coolest, most distracting discovery of my photography interests. Sure, I started viewing the world in “ooh this would look nice if I set my shutter speed to 4 seconds” or “ooh if I did a F/2.6 on this one and focused on that…” when I got my Canon Powershot A520, but this discovery had me hankering over hot tungsten lightbulbs and sunny days, much longer than uh, my previous hankerings.

But first, the cool stuff.

Infrared photography, baby!

Left: infrared, right: normal. Trees glow and reflect glorious IR from the sun.

A small Ikea table lamp provides enough IR for macro shots, like the following:

Up close, IR can see through leaves…

It can also see through certain types of ink, like this tabsheet, printed with a Canon bubblejet printer, and written on with a Kilometrico ballpoint pen. The infrared picture was superimposed on the normal one, and I erased away to show the with/without effects.

Using flash, you can also place the filter on the flash and the lens for an ‘infrared’ flash!

You can tell which shops use tungsten bulbs and which use flourescent lights. Nope, the apparently Ah-Bengified shops are not flourescent! (This picture was Photoshopped from two pictures; one infrared, the other not.)

Combining pictures in Photoshop can be quite fun.

This here, boys and girls, is the key ingredient. The blackened end of a 35mm film negative. The purple part is more easily found, with the dark brown part being the more powerful filter. It filters out normal light, leaving infrared rays to pass through to your digital camera. Digicam CCDs can pick up a certain amount of IR (as compared to film cameras) but have a lens element which is coated to remove IR rays, otherwise giving a IR tint to normal pictures. Some digicams and webcams have a separate lens element just for IR filtering, even! The amount of IR that passes through depends on the digicam.

The spots on the purple part were caused by rainwater. While it could not wash off the layer, it did leave temporary blemishes. You could however use fingernails to scratch off any of the parts to find the original transparent, colorless cellulose film.

In case you’re wondering, I found the film in my mom’s 20-year old stash of negatives. You may not find such amateurish film processing (the machines will replace them all!) and may end up with a smaller purple portion.

Film negatives become transparent in infrared!

Left: One layer of film negative; right: two layers. I usually stack four (that makes it really dark) so I’d have to compensate by slowing the shutter speed about 250 times, or making the aperture larger (to say F/2.6). The more layers, the less natural light and color shows. The best time to get glowing trees is in the bright sun, when you set your camera to Program mode, and it tells you the shutter speed should be 1/250 or faster. Both pictures are unedited!

Fazri‘s Canon Powershot A95 was less sensitive to infrared radiation but had sharper, much more focused pictures than mine! Here, he uses his swivel screen to prop his camera at an angle. He also folded the negative strip so it would provide four layers of filters, then used a wire to fasten the layers.

The second picture, if you noticed, had green globs; that was the sun’s effect. There is also a slight white spot in the middle, caused by: 1) negative layers being slightly curved and not flat 2) zooming in 3) having an aperture that is too small (F/7.1 or so).

To focus, first focus on the subject without the negative, then place the negatives, and if possible, make your focus slightly shorter. If you’re lazy you could just set it to infinity like I do.

Now for some math: If you were in the sun, taking a picture of a field, and the camera says it wants to use a shutter speed of 1/1000, you may have to slow it down to 1/4. Your digicam would obviously show you white, but heck – press the focus, and while your digicam does its automatic focusing, you would see a darkened picture (for a split second).

How do you make a dark brown/purple negative anyway? Just pull out an unused film roll and leave it in light for 5 seconds to overexpose it. Send it for processing only. (Unless you like staring at completely white photos.) Total cost? 10% of a proper, commercial IR filter.

Much can be done in 15 seconds. All pictures were made with one shot, long exposure, meaning no Photoshop was used to combine pictures. No color adjustments were made either.

I searched in my soul in order and fought myself.

Now all I need is a green suit.

Are my eyes open or closed?

I placed the portable flourescent light under a pillow to give minimal lighting.

Yes, I’ve never blogged with pictures showing anything below my neck. Or so I remember.

I have a new toy, oh boy, oh boy! The Canon Powershot A520, one of the smallest, cheapest cameras with full manual control, meaning shutter priority mode (for freeze frame and slowmo effects), aperture priority mode (for focusing and blurring everything else) and manual focus. I found out about the new manual-controllable Casio Exilims a bit too late. 🙁

I can now use a small aperture to get the same effect in horror movies, where the victim is in focus, while the murderer looms behind. The camera then focuses on the murderer (and his weapon) with the victim out of focus.

Flash with long exposure makes for a very trippy Bobby enjoying the famed Hartamas Square “nine inches of love” Texan hot dog.

Smoke comes out from this temple. Guess what this is!

Guess where this was taken!

Sure you can take a picture of a moving fan with flash, but what about without flash?

This was done with 1/100 second shutter speed, aperture of F2.6, ISO200 and most importantly, a fan speed of 1. 😛

There was a fly. It was perched outside my window, watching every single thing I was doing.

I flashed it.

It didn’t move.

I used manual focus to blur out the light, and macro flash to flash only the fly and not the ceiling. Interestingly, the ceiling is actually white!

P.S. This is better than smashpOp‘s attempt; when he zoomed 12x with his Panasonic FZ-5, the camera couldn’t focus on the fly… and it went off focus until it disappeared completely from the view! Since he didn’t have manual focus he couldn’t get a clear shot of it. 😛

Finally, the coolest:

Fazri was in white so he was the perfect subject (I was wearing black). This was a 10 second exposure, with Fazri shifting positions every 3 seconds. To get this effect, you should shoot in a place with a dark background, with a bright light on the subject. You may just catch us reenacting The Matrix in KLCC Park on his blog.

Quick quiz:

Given A and B, what is D (degree) and R (radius)?