For the past several months, staring with my post of June 14, I’ve been trying to do some PhotoWalks each week for both mental and physical therapy. Initially I did these walking with the assistance of a cane but more recently, they have been done without using a cane. That doesn’t make them any easier to do but it’s got to help, right? So this past Saturday I headed to Downtown Parker, this time to shoot in infrared.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
When you’re alone and life is making you lonely, You can always go downtown—Petula Clark
Because of an explosion of population that’s been fueled by an equal explosion of building thousands of apartment complexes and dozens of new housing developments, the nearby (to Daisy Hill) town of Parker, Colorado has been growing by 8.75% a year since the most recent census. It won’t be long until this small town becomes a small city. So I was not surprised when I pulled into the parking lot for O’Brien Park to see yet another event going on. I almost turned around but remembered the promise to myself to do these PhotoWalks for my mental and physical well being.
How I Made this photo: I photographed the O’Brien Park gazebo—yet again—this time using a Panasonic Lumix G5 and a Lumix 12-32mm 3.5-5.6 ASPH kit lens at 12mm (24mm equivalent.) The Av exposure was 1/250 sec at f/11 and ISO 400 and was every so slightly underexposed, which seems to be a characteristic with this camera/IR conversion or maybe just the camera/ The RAW file was converted to monochrome using Silver Efex’s High Structure (harsh) preset. For an interesting comparison of the difference that 3mm can make, this image was made at the same spot as the image I made with the Olympus 9mm fish-eye lens cap lens you can see in this post.
PhotoWalkin’
The last time I tried this very same PhotoWalk it was with an Olympus Pen E-P3 and two Olympus pancake lenses. This time I was planning on taking the exact same walk, down the same streets but instead would be photographing it in infrared using a Panasonic Lumix G5 that has a Standard IR (720nm) infrared conversion by Life Pixel. The Lens used was the Lumix 12-32mm 3.5-5.6 ASPH kit lens. (More about the lens later.) Like my E-P3, the camera has been slightly customized with a leather half-case from Korea that I picked up on eBay and a red aluminum thumb rest, also from eBay.
As before, my walk took me down Mainstreet (proper spelling) and right onto Pikes Peak Drive which is populated by many charming Victorian era homes, including Newcomb House (below.) It also took me past my wall of perfectly laid bricks, where I decided to make an impromptu test of the Lumix 12-32mm 3.5-5.6 ASPH kit lens. Much like the Olympus 9mm fish-eye lens, DxO doesn’t provide a score for the Lumix 12-32mm 3.5-5.6. My unofficial take on the lens is that it’s performance is, at best, marginal although the lens seems more than acceptably sharp at smaller apertures around f/11 and diffraction didn’t seem to be a problem at that aperture..
How I Made this Photograph of Newcomb House: The lot that this house sits on was part of George Parker’s—brother of the town’s namesake James Parker—original homestead claim and was purchased from him by James Newcomb for $150.00. Newcomb first arrived in Parker in September of 1909 for the purpose of visiting an old friend. The Newcomb House was designated as a landmark by the Town of Parker on August 20, 2007 and is now a private home.
I photographed the house with a Panasonic Lumix G5 converted to IR by Life Pixel and a Lumix 12-32mm 3.5-5.6 ASPH kit lens at 12mm (24mm equivalent.) The Av exposure was 1/500 sec at f/11 and ISO 400. There was some flare—this lens can be flarey—but I retouched the one artifact on the image using Photoshop;’s Clone stamp tool.
What’s Next?
In my quest to find the best black and white infrared solution (for me) I ended up doing three different infrared PhotoWalks at McCabe Meadows with three different camera/IR conversion combinations. Here is the first one and there was even a bonus post. As a result of those tests, I selected the Lumix G5 with Standard IR conversion for this PhotoWalk, which is the second PhotoWalk in this series.
What’s next for the final entry in my (hopefully) Downtown Trilogy? Film photography. I recently ordered two rolls of Ilford’s new IlfoColor Vintage Tone 400 Plus film from Reformed Photo Lab in Florida and plan to use that film for my next Downtown PhotoWalk. What Camera will I use for that PhotoWalk? I haven’t decided yet but am open to suggestions if you have any.
I’ve found that Life Pixel does a great job with IR conversions and they’ve done most of the conversions for my Canon DSLRs and all of my Panasonic Lumix G-series cameras. This is not a paid or sponsored endorsement, just my experience.
Used copies of my book, The Complete Guide to Digital Infrared Photography are currently available new from Amazon for $33.66 or used copies for less than four bucks, as I write this. Creative Digital Monochrome Effects has a chapter on IR photography and new copies are available from Amazon for $16.16 with used copies starting at less than three bucks, which is a heckuva deal.