CAPTURE NEW HORIZONS

As we are moving out of Grantham in less than three weeks I have decided to visit some of my favourite photographic haunts over the next 14 days for one last time.   Yesterday morning I went for a walk up to Belmont Tower, which is situated on a hill near the village of Londonthorpe at the end of an avenue of trees.  At the other end of the avenue is Belton House and Belmont Tower is part of the estate which is now owned by the National Trust and so open to the public. This image was taken on the Fuji X100 with the WCL-X100 wide angle converter lens attached and using an 720nm infrared filter.  The exposure was 4 seconds @ f8 (ISO200) which meant I had to use the Manfrotto tripod to make sure everything was rock steady while the shutter was open. The second image was taken from a slightly different viewpoint with the X100 fitted with the WCL-X100 but this time with a Lee 10x ND filter (big stopper) and a Lee 0.6 Soft ND Grad. This gave an exposure o...

Experimenting with different filters and lenses is great in photography but sometimes it can be very expensive.  Infrared photography has been around for many, many years but with the advent of digital photography it is now easier to give it a go.   The best way is to have an old camera converted to infrared photography.  There are plenty of companies who are able to carry out the conversion, which can cost a over £100 to carry out, and once it is done then the camera can only be used for one type of photography - hence the use of an older model.   But these cameras do give the best results. A cheaper way of dipping your toe into Infrared Photography is to buy one of the cheap lenses available on eBay.  I did this recently, spending a grand total of £15 on a 77mm screw in filter.  Fitted to the Fuji X100S, the results are very striking.  I use a 77mm filter because the majority of my Nikon lenses are 77mm or less and it is cheaper to buy step...