This image was taken last year with a Nikon D40. It was then transferred to my Iphone and edited in the Iphone with the Photogene image editor. The only thing that I did to it after taking it back out of the Iphone is to add the copyright text.
Photogene is a great little program, this is sort of extreme case of what it can do, but it is also great for doing those basic photo adjustments such as levels and contrast adjustments.
I played around with IR photography back in my film days, but never got really excited about it. Like a lot of other aspects of film photography, the time between taking the image and seeing the results was simply to long. It didn’t allow for experimentation and adjusting of shots on the fly.
Digital photography has changed how many of us look at photography. We get instant feedback allowing us to make subtle changes to composition and exposure. Some argue that this hurts “pure” photography, but personally I find it very liberating.
Because of the changes that digital has made in my photographic life, I have developed a passion for IR photos. I have spent a lot of time online simply looking at peoples IR galleries. It has motivated me to get into IR in a much more significant way than I ever could have with film.
This image was one of the first taken with a “new to me” Nikon D70s that has been converted to IR. A dslr is converted to IR by removing the IR block filter that sits over the image sensor and replacing it with a filter that passes IR, or in this case near IR, and blocks most visible light.
I still have a few things I need to address in this camera, I bought it for a very low price, and I have discovered that there is some dust between the IR pass filter and the sensor. There are a couple things I can do to address this, first is by simply fixing those dust spots in post by using something like Photoshop’s spot healing brush, but a more long term solution will be to remove the filter and clean everything up. That will require taking the camera apart. I certainly have the skills to do that, and will probably tackle that project within the next few weeks.
Most people who are interested in photography will know what a Holga is. For those that don’t, google will tell you everything you need to know, but basically it is a cheap camera that has a lot of optical flaws. These flaws though can be used to take some very interesting pictures, you just have the know the limitations of the Holga.
I believe that the Iphone is the same way. It has a really terrible little camera built into it. There are some nice apps for the Iphone that will help the images captured by the Iphone, but basically it is just a really expensive Holga. Just like the Holga, if you know the limitations of the Iphone’s camera, you can manage to take some nice photos.
This image was taken with my Iphone 3G and processed with the Iphone Tiltshift app. All processing was done in the Iphone.
Of course it will not replace even the worst dslr on the market, or point and shoot for that matter, but it is still fun to play with.
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