[Theme] Pictorial UV

[BW]

Comparing your work to Bjørn's is never a good idea, especially in the UV realm 

When you get frustrated working with UV you can always just hang your camera out the window of a moving car and hope a rock smashes through your lens

Hehe... I dont need UV work to go thru your suggested routine. Sometimes creativity seem like a rare commodity..

[Bjørn Rørslett]

"Swords in Stone": The 1111 Year Memorial for the unification of Norway, at Hafrsfjord.

Nikon D40x, 10-24 mm f/3.5-4.5 Nikkor. Not the choice of a UV lens for most people, but provide enough UV and there will be a resulting image.

[Akira]

Earlier digital UV had a lot of out-passband contamination. Thus it is well-nigh hopeless to make these files appear like what we can acquire today.

For pictorial UV, little or no harm is done anyway, as there are no rules set in stone at play here. For more exacting comparative studies on say UV signatures and patterns, one need much better control of what spectral regions are recorded by the camera.

As recommended in Bjørn's first UV tutorial on his original website, selecting species whose UV pattern is well known is desirable for the UV experiment in its early stage.

This is the very first "successful" UV(-ish) image in B&W conversion.  D2H, LPL 75mm/f4.5 enlarger lens, U-360 filter (yes, still a massive IR contamination) and a UV-modified Sunpak 360 flash.  I add the VIS image of the same scene to demonstrate how the world looks differently in different light.  The same rig only without U-360 and the flash.

[Bjørn Rørslett]

Akira: Looks very much like a Brassica, but cannot narrow down further as there is no foliage or siliques to be seen.

[Akira]

Akira: Looks very much like a Brassica, but cannot narrow down further as there is no foliage or siliques to be seen.

Sorry I was too much concentrated on capturing the UV pattern on the petals to include additional info for identifying the species.   

[Bjørn Rørslett]

UV photography as such has the potential of making extra sharp images because shorter wavelengths are used.

Sometimes this is exactly what the photographer wants or needs, at other times it really doesn't matter or is contra productive.

This capture of the last sun rays on a snow-covered mountainside is definitively positioned in the latter class.  I could either get the craggy mountain spruces in the foreground into sharp focus, or the mountain peak itself, but not both simultaneously. Light faded fast and exposures were getting very long, so I had to made a decision and choose neither alternative. The outcome was a delicate pastel-like rendition of the scenery, that prints or projects beautifully.

I frequently use this image in talks on nature photography, to demonstrate the importance of emotional content.

Nikon D40X, Baader U2 (Venus) filter, 1000 mm f/11 Reflex-Nikkor

[Bjørn Rørslett]

Following in the same vein, albeit carrying it a bit further, a flower meadow in UV and summer breeze.

Nikon D200, itorex 300 mm f/5.6 (reflex lens), Baader U.

[Frank Fremerey]

#50, #63, #64.2 for me.

The blue bottle shot is so suggestive. The idea to have inflow anmd outflow on the same side is very very nice & the fluid just glows from the inside
The lake surfaces in the latter piucs are interesting to my eyes because they have these subtle color transitions. ... I still cannot "read" #63 but that is a good thing

[Bjørn Rørslett]

In search of the 'hidden patterns' forged by UV,

[Akira]

A UV macro (larger-than-life) shot.  Patrinia scabiosifolia.  D2H, JML 50/3.5 enlarger lens reversed, U-360, BG-40, UV-modified Sunpak 360 flash.

Because of the design of my reverse-mount adapter for JML, I had to focus with the lens wide open by moving the camera, detach the lens, stop down to f11, attach the lens again, put the filter combo, shift the whole rig to compensate for the focus shift and shoot.  I had to repeat this procedure until I nail the amount of focus shift.   

[Bjørn Rørslett]

S M I L E

UV makes teeth fluoresce brightly.

[Bjørn Rørslett]

My first experience with a solar eclipse and UV. The eclipse (2003) was just partial and I had still a lot to learn about UV and of photography in general.

[Bjørn Rørslett]

The harsh environment of an Alpine Hawkweed. In UV.

[Bjørn Rørslett]

This cluster of ancient oak trees, locally known as The King's Oak, believed to be 500-1000 years old, is a frequently photographed scene outside Oslo, Norway. I live just a few minutes away so this is a motif very familiar to me.

Nikon D3200, Nikkor 18 mm f/4, built-in Baader U ('venus') filter.



I have deliberately processed this to appear similar in tonality and colours to the first digital UV frames shot 15 years ago with my Nikon D1 and the UV-Nikkor. This approach removes some of the finer details of course, but with the 24 MPix frame of the D3200 at your disposition, one can allow this. Although image quality has increased immensely over the time span since the D1, I'm not equally sure about the impressions of UV being that much better. While our favoured 'standard false colour' palette is useful for comparative purposes, the outcome sometimes lacks visual impact. Landscape motifs exemplify this.

[Akira]

This is a result of the effort of emulating the color rendition of Fuji RTP II.  The effort was not successful, but I like the image.

D2H, Series E 28/2.8, U-360, BG-40.