Today;s Post by Joe Farace
Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far.—Thomas Jefferson
Snow is expected sometime this month in my little corner of Colorado and all of the leaves that are currently barely hanging onto their trees may soon disappear because of a heavy wet Fall snow. How much snow and it’s effects on deciduous trees will determine how many, if any, leaves will remain and that may affect how I make digital infrared images over the next month. It just may be last chance infrared.—Joe Farace, October 4, 2022
On Sunday,, September 21. Mary and I took a walk around McCabe Meadows. For the last few weeks, I had been gradually trying to increase my outdoors walking and on this day I made some major progress. Many thanks to my Instagram friends for suggesting that I set some small goals to work on that when completed encourages me to set more and maybe larger goals…
A Tale of Two Cameras
I own two Panasonic Lumix GX1 cameras: The GX1 is a 16-megapixel camera that Panasonic launched in 2011. It was available with either a black or silver body—I have one of each—with prices starting at $699.99 at the time or about $1000 in today’s dollars. Each of mine, obtained from different sources, cost $100 and one came with the LVF2 electronic viewfinder, which itself sells for $150 that interestingly was it’s original price. I keep the silver bodied one that has LifePixel’s Hyper Color infrared conversion in a black Think Tank bag and the black bodied model with its original sensor in a maroon Billingham bag. But, for whatever reason, that EVF is always on the “other” camera than the one I want to use. So when I grabbed the silver IR camera with Olympus 17mm f/2.8 lens to go to McCabe Meadows, the EVF was—naturally—on the other camera but I “pressed on regardless.”
How I Made this Photograph: This is NOT a fall photograph but was made last weekend in McCabe Meadows in Parker, Colorado. You can see what the SOOC image file I captured looks like at above right. The image was processed using one of the actions that Life Pixel previously included when you had a camera converted for infrared capture. (I don’t know of they still do this.) The Av exposure was 1/640 sec at f/16 and ISO 400.
The camera used was the silver model; it looks grey to me, Panasonic Lumix GX1 that was converted for infrared capture by Life Pixel using their Hyper Color filter. The lens was the Olympus M.Zuiko 17mm f/2.8 that has seven elements in four groups. This lens is silver and is less expensive than the black version that appears to be weather sealed, if that’s important to you. This lens will focus as close as 7.87-inches (20cm) and has a dismal DxO rating of 19. If you’re wondering about that rating, scores in the 30s or higher are considered “very good to excellent” for a modern lens, so 19 ain’t so hot. But the results have, so far, looked fine to me. I think it may be time for me to do another “It’s Not the Sharpest Knife in the Drawer” post about this particular lens.
PhotoWalk with a Cane
Because walking outdoors can be challenging for me, as PhotoWalks go this one was not that long in duration. According to the EXIF data, my walk was less than one-half hour but was, at least, twice as long as a similar walk in McCabe Meadows, a week before. Walking with a cane was more of an annoyance then a help but Mary was there to hold it while I was making these photographs and I didn’t make that many—only 19 RAW+JPEG images, 38 in total. When I’m shooting with this Hyper Color camera. I always shoot in RAW+JPEG but don’t set the JPEG’s in monochrome mode or any other color option. That’s because I typically plan to process these files in color, like the above, and don’t want any untoward influences.
When the walk was all over, I asked myself was this PhotoWalk Last Chance Infrared? I don’t think so, but last night there was some heavy rain which blew a bunch of leaves off the trees in my backyard, So it could be, barring any surprise, wet snowstorm that knocks all the leaves off the trees. Hey, it happens.
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 available from Amazon starting around nine bucks as I write this. My book Creative Digital Monochrome Effects has a chapter on IR photography and is available new from Amazon for $11.46 with used copies starting around six bucks as I write this.