AGO Observation Deck

Observation Deck - Canon T2i & Pentax-M 20mm f4. Embiggen.

Never noticed this new addition to the back of the Art Gallery until today. Very interesting design.

Fun with Infrared Photography - Part II

There are many problems that need to be overcome with infrared photography, depending on how one goes about doing it. For people who just use IR filters on unmodified cameras, the biggest issues are exposure time and black viewfinder. For a modified camera, they are focus and metering.

Unless your camera was designed from ground up as an IR camera, the metering and auto focus system are geared to and calibrated for visible light. On an IR modified camera, these two components will no longer work reliably. In most cases, the metering needs to be adjusted by at least 1 stop, but most of the time, 1.5 to 2 stops on anything that do not emit heavy infrared like buildings. For trees or flowers on a sunny day, negative compensation is required, sometimes as much as 2 stops. Thanks to digital, this is not as a big deal as it sounds, as you can always take a picture and adjust exposure as needed. The trickier part is achieving accurate focusing.

If you have a manual focus film SLR with a lens at home collecting dust, you will almost always find an infrared index on the lens. In the case of a zoom lens, there maybe multiple IR marks. Even the cheapest of lenses in the old days would have this index. Now a days, you will be lucky to get a distance scale on the lens, let alone IR mark. Unfortunately, to get accurate focusing, you will need to reference this IR marking on the lens.

The focus point for infrared is always ahead of that of the available light. If focus is achieved at 1 meter, the infrared mark is usually at around 1.1 to 1.2 meters. What this means is that once you see the picture is sharp on the view finder, you will need to turn focusing ring slight farther where the IR mark indicates. The amount of compensation is different for each lens. Some more and some less. This sounds like complicated, but it's not. After you have tried it a few times, you don't need to look at the mark any more, you will now approximately how much compensation you will need. Of course, if you use very large apertures like f1.2 or f1.4, this will be much harder to achieve critical focus.

Today I shot with a Pentax-M 20mm f4 lens on the IR 20D, and I am surprised how many sharp keepers. Partly because the 20mm f4 lens has a very short focus throw, anything farther than 2 meters is considered infinity, so the lens was set at infinity most of the time. The trick I used was focus bracketing. Take a picture at the indicated visible light, than turn the focus slight ahead for another pictures, and still a little further ahead for a third picture. This turned out really well.

Next time, we will talk about different IR filters and their effects on the picture.


St. Mary's Dormition Ukrainian Catholic Church -- IR 20D & Pentax-M 20mm f4.


Tool Shed in false colours -- IR 20D & Pentax-M 20mm f4. Larger Picture.


Bench in false colours - IR 20D & Pentax-M 20mm f4. Larger Picture.

Filmic Lane for Mawz

Filmic Lane -- Canon T2i & Pentax-M 20mm f4 with CPL. Larger Picture.

This one is for Adam, who has a blog in LiveJournal called Filmic. This Filmic Lane is near Pape & Dundas sts, but I don't see anything filmic about it, unless there are some historic significance I don't know about.

Spring Is Finally Here

It's strange, but spring always seem to sneak up on me unexpected. Each year, from the official spring day on, I would expect to see green leaves everywhere, but being in Toronto, temperature on March 20 is usually in the negative territory, and often snow can still be seen. Everywhere I look, it would be gray and dull. And then, when I least expect it, boom! Trees are green and flowers blossom everywhere!

Just last week I was looking for some green leaves to photograph but couldn't find any. Today, they are here, there and everywhere. I am glad to see them, although spring always bring with it pollens which makes me feel miserable for a couple of months. This is the time I usually take a lot of pictures until the flowers wither.

Spring also brings the Spring Festival, when most Chinese people would bring offerings to visit and pay respect to the ancestors in cemeteries.


New Life -- Canon T2i & Pentax-M 20mm f4 with CPL. Larger Picture.


Remains of Winter -- T2i & Pentax-M 20mm f4 with CPL. Larger Picture.


Pine Hill Cemetery -- T2i & Pentax-M 20mm f4 with CPL. Larger Picture.

Pentax SMC-M 20mm f4

Old Pentax lenses are well regarded for their small size, optical quality, SMC coating and great construction. The SMC-M 20mm f4 is one of those lenses. It's unfortunate that when mounted on the G1, it becomes a 40mm lens. At f4 maximum aperture, the lens is a bit slow, but totally acceptable as a wide angle lens, since in most cases, one would stop down for maximum depth of field anyway. Using it on the G1 is nice and easy, but as a standard lens, it's way too slow to use indoors. When I had my Pentax K10D, this lens work great on it. Very sharp even wide open. Some say the distortion is not very good on this lens, but I didn't notice it, especially on the G1, where most of the glass is masked out. One of the features I like a lot about this lens is the extremely close focus at 0.25m. Makes for some nice close ups. Not quite as small as a pancake lens, but it's darn close. As with many of my lenses, it doesn't get used much, though I really should.

   Shanti Baba -- Canon 5D & SMC-M 20mm f4.

Door handle -- Canon 5D & Pentax-M 20mm f4.

KFC & Taco Bell -- G1 & Pentax-M 20mm f4.

 This lens case really get close -- G1 & Pentax-M 20mm f4

Valentine 2008 -- Pentax K10D & 20mm f4.