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At one time I was able to kick-start a barren period of photography by using a specialist emulsion, such as infrared - something not so easy to do with a digital SLR. There are ways, of course, as it is perfectly feasible to have a body converted (at a price) solely for infra-red shooting, but the modification is permanent. Doing this would deprive me of my back up camera; something I am not prepared to sacrifice.
The thing is, that this type of photography is fun, inasmuch as that it is somewhat unpredictable. The photograph of St. John the Evangelist church at Holdenhurst Village, Dorset, was the very first exposure made by me on such film, and although I had read articles on the subject beforehand, it was still largely guesswork. For one, I had to manually focus the lens onto the special infrared index mark on the lens barrel, as the unseen rays are longer than visible light. I also needed a deep red filter over the lens to block most of the visible spectrum. Having done all this; and set up on a tripod due to long shutter speeds, I had to guess at exposure since the camera's meter didn't respond to infrared radiation. All rather jolly.
The resulting negatives were rather dense - despite some serious bracketing at the shooting stage - and the best of them required a basic exposure of five minutes at f/8 in the enlarger! Of course, now I am able to scan the negative and work on the image in Adobe Photoshop, which gives me far greater control, but not quite such fun when something pleasing comes up in the developer. Those were the days!
24mm f/2.8 Zuiko lens. Kodak Wratten 25 filter. Kodak High-Speed Infrared film (HIE), rated at ISO 50. Tripod and cable release. July 6th, 1986
© 1986-2012
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