it aint easy bein sneaky

[Mike Perkowitz <map@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

ever since i heard about the idea of IR flash and saw a picture of someone
taken in total darkness with IR film and flash, ive wanted to experiment
with it. not so much because im a voyeur or something (no comment) but
because i like taking candid photos in places like clubs, and i dont like
calling attention to myself with lots of flash. i do shoot with delta 3200
sometimes but using IR flash would let me do things i cant do with fast
film. but having the flash be invisible is important if i want the
pictures to remain candid. anyway, i figured i'd share what ive
experimented with so far in hopes of either (a) helping someone else; (b)
getting suggestions on how to do this better.

sunpak makes an IR flash head, i think, which you can mount on one of
their (not cheap) flashes. i generally hate flash though, so im not about
to buy some whizzy flash just for that. what i did is i bought a wratten
87. then i made a cardboard hood for my cheapo little flash. cut out the
part of the hood that goes over the flashy part and taped in a cut-out
piece of the 87 filter. mounted on my manual slr, this worked great. i
took a roll of HIE out to a club and just took test shots at different
distances and apertures to get a feel for the right settings. problem is,
i find a big SLR with a flash moutned on it a bit bulky for taking stealth
pictures at a club.

my next idea was to take the old point and shoot i dnt use any more and
turn it into an IR cam. id tape IR filter over the flash and lens (and
tape up the film window in back) and have a dedicated stealth camera. the
only problem i could see was that im not sure what ASA the camera defaults
to if there's no code on the film, and there arent really any adjustments
to make if it doesnt come out well. anyway, i never got to that point.
see, the point and shoot (like many it seems) has the viewfinder, flash,
and light sensors all behind one piece of plastic. if you put the IR
filter outside this plastic, you get a lot of flash leakage which makes
the whole thing far from stealthy. trying to get the IR filter inside the
plastic without leakage was next to impossible. and i was leery of leaving
the plastic off entirely as it presumably protects all the crap.

next solution: i just got an olympus XA. i got the A11 flash (which
normally i wouldnt use at all) and taped IR filter over the flash. this
seems to work fairly well (just tried it out for the first time tonight).
there's little visible light leakage (though the A11's orange ready light
is pretty noticeable! doh). it's not perfect. for example, the XA lets you
set the flash on "full" and set the aperture yourself (ni "flash" setting
it uses an aperture of 4). however, since the light is low and the flash
is invisible to the XA's light meter, it doesnt know when it's gotten
enough light and the shutter stays open a long time. i mostly kept it in
flash mode, which means i couldnt really control the aperture. we'll see
how the tests come out.

so some success so far, but i havent found the ideal camera for this yet.
if i were going to buy a camera especially for this (and i dont think
it's really worth doing that), i'd look for:
- is it easy to cover the flash with no light leakage?
- can you control the camera's aperture in order to calibrate the flash?
- if it's a point & shoot, is there exposure compensation so you can
  calibrate the workigns to the way the film/flash combo behaves?
- is the camera small, non-flashy, and free of blinking lights?
- is it easy to cover the lens with filter too? (not essential if you're
  only using it for IR flash wrk in the dark, but handy if you want to use
  it for general IR too)


hope that was useful and/or interesting

mike


______________________________________________________________________________
       map@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  ||  work: www.cs.washington.edu/homes/map/     
          mike@xxxxxxxxxxxxx  ||  look: www.perkowitz.net/photo
              mike perkowitz  ||  hear: www.mp3.com/perkowitz

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