IR Fireworks

What to do on the 4th of July…  Humm…  Grill? Done.  Catch up with family? Done.  Relax? Done.  Watch fireworks?  Wait a second…  How many of you have photographed fireworks?  I’m guilty.  But who’s photographed fireworks in IR?  I’ve never done that, and probably few have.  Let’s give it a try. I climbed on the […]

Medium Format Lenses – Part II

Several months ago, I wrote a blog about using medium format lenses on DSLR.  I wanted to continue this series with a little more information.  In my experience, one of the most understood characteristics of using non-standard lenses with different film/sensor size is crop factor.  Before going into this, let’s get a little background on […]

Bracketed Exposures for IR photography

What are bracketed exposures? If you’re familiar with this term, you know how useful they can be. There are multiple uses for bracketed exposures, but they are especially helpful in IR photography. Shooting bracketed exposures is where the camera is set-up to shoot the same scene, but at different exposures. Nearly all stock cameras are […]

Focusing a Full Spectrum Camera

If you’ve read any of my other blogs, you might know that I started IR photography as a spinoff of my astrophotography. Both of these types of photography have some similarities. First, most cameras need to be modified to shoot IR photos. For the exact same reason, you’ll need to modify your camera to shoot […]

If Your Eyes Could See… Part 2

In Part 1 of this series I presented a few color astro photos that represent what you’d see, if your eyes were super sensitive. In part 2, I’m presenting similar images, only these will be presented in one color, the color of H-alpha. Hydrogen alpha is likely the most important emission, for imaging the night […]

If Your Eyes Could See… – Part 1

For those of us that shoot IR photos, we already have a glimpse into what the world looks like illuminated in the invisible light of infrared. It has fascinated me that photos photographed in this light can have such interest and depth. Similarly, I have seen things in the heavens that only those with the […]

Diffraction and IR Photography

A few years after I began my photography adventure I took a photography class that came free with my first SLR camera. I thought I knew a lot about photography.  After taking the class I thought I knew all there was to know about photography.  Funny thing is that all these years later I’m still […]

A Different Kind of “Photography”

When I was a college student, I was working as a welder on a construction site. I was an Engineering student at that time. But science was always something that had my interest. Many folks, interested in science or not, have a fascination with lasers. I was no different. At that time semiconductor lasers (diode […]

Manual Panorama Assembly

The weather is perfect, the lighting is just right and you’ve just finished shooting a 3 frame panorama of an interesting scene. You’re anxious to get home and assemble the images. So you grab a cup of coffee, load up your images and proceed with the panorama assembly. Then the reality hits you that you […]

Short Sticks

Do you use a tripod?  I do for almost every shot.  The way I shoot IR necessitates the use of a tripod.  Could I hand-hold my IR shots?  Probably.  But I love to shoot panoramas and in poor weather.  I’m also a sort of a purist when it comes to getting the most out of […]

Southwest IR Photography

Like many other things in life, we think the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. I enjoy digging through forums and seeing photographs of other photographers. I used to think that all these photographers had better subjects for photography. This is especially true when I got into IR photography. IR […]

Medium Format Lenses on a DSLR

It’s no surprise that photography equipment is expensive.  Think of the engineering and workmanship that goes into lenses and DSLR bodies.   As with everything, there are always levels of expense.   Lets examine lenses specifically.  The professional-class lenses tend to have fewer issues.  Yet, trade-off’s always exist with either professional or consumer glass.  So […]

Infrared Haze Reduction

Did you ever wonder why IR landscape photos look so crispy sharp? It may not be obvious. But photographing in the near-infrared part of the spectrum has some definite benefits over photographing visible light, especially for landscape photography. Before we get into the photography portion, let’s take a look at some of the science involved.  […]

Shooting Infrared Panoramas

Panoramas are the ideal tool for capturing scenes with expansive views or to increase the field of view of a lens. They are also a lot of fun to shoot. However with the excitement of shooting a panorama comes the frustrating reality of assembling the images into to single frame. Without some proper shooting techniques […]

Infrared Norway

With my 5 part astrophotography series  completed, I wanted to make a change for this blog. This past June I spent a couple weeks in Norway in a little coastal town called Andenes on the island of Andøya.  What a stunningly gorgeous place! Words can not do it justice.  It is nearly impossible to take […]

Astrophotography Image Processing

Here we are with the final installment of our astrophotography series. We’ve looked at doing astrophotography in the daytime, shooting simple objects at night, and some more advanced equipment and stacking techniques. If you missed any of these, you can catch them here. In this series finale, we’re going to take a look at some […]

Astrophotography Image Stacking – Astro Stacking

Hopefully you’ve been out shooting and applying what you’ve learned about astrophotography. For most there’s a fairly big learning curve with astrophotography. I was always pretty good with the computer, electronics, and the mechanical hardware, but learning to process the images was a huge challenge. Hopefully I can share what I’ve learned to help speed […]

Astrophotography III

In the last couple of blogs, we discussed astrophotography using a fixed tripod. We looked at several of the different targets that can be shot this way. But after shooting from a fixed tripod for a while, it becomes fairly obvious that there is a need for a way to track the motion of the […]

Astrophotography II

In the last astrophotography installment, we discussed opportunities to do astrophotography in the daytime. Although interesting and challenging, shooting celestial objects in the daytime is probably not what most folks relate to astrophotography. So in this blog, we’re going to be turning down the light and shooting at night. Shooting a camera at night poses […]

Daylight Astrophotography

Have you ever really seen the night sky? You’d think so. But if you’ve seen it from a dark site, away from the city lights, you’re aware that things look very different. The constellations become more difficult to pick out of the bright expanse of stars. The Milky way becomes visible, as do some of […]