My BLOG about my journey into the invisible world of ultraviolet UV photography, simulated bee, butterfly and animal vision photography and the special lenses, filters and lighting needed to make it work - also in HD video + 3D stereo.
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BBC Press Office announced March 3rd that (quote) Richard Hammond's Invisible Worlds begins 16th March, 3 episodes @ 9pm on BBC1 (unquote).
Just got the confirmation that episode 2 + 3 will be aired the following weeks later at the same time (March 23 + 30). My contribution will be seen in episode 2 on March 23, "Out of Sight". ((quote from BBC)) In Out Of Sight, Richard explores the extraordinary wonders of the world beyond the visible spectrum.
The human eye is a remarkable piece of precision engineering. But beyond the narrow range of light that makes up the familiar colours of the rainbow is a vast spectrum of light that is entirely unseen. In fact, the visible world is just the tiniest sliver of a far greater reality.
Now, through the use of ground-breaking new imaging technologies and state-of-the-art cameras, Richard Hammond takes a journey beyond the visible spectrum, seeing the world, quite literally, in a whole new light.
...
Closer to the ground, ultraviolet cameras transform the view of an ordinary flower garden, capturing a dizzy array of hidden patterns and colours – an insect's eye view. ((unquote))
Amazon UK has the BBC DVD already on pre-order, release date has been shifted to May 3rd, 2010.
This the PAL version, most likely only viewable in Europe.
I would assume there will be a Blue-Ray Disc also, since it has been produced in full HDTV, but I have no further info on that.
The first idea which might have caused softness was IR leakage, but since that special XBV2 filter stack used includes an IR suppressing filter, this was not the reason.
Since I have an alternative filter stack called XBV2a, I tested it against it - with a a big surprise: A much sharper result could be obtained.
All shot using UV-Rodagon 105mm at f8 using Xenon high Power flash and otherwise identical conditions except the filters used.
It gets very obvious, that the use of the XBV2a filter results in much improved sharpness, whereas the XBV2 filter result looks rather soft (1:1 pixel presentation).
Here now the two images full size:
XBV2 (old version):
An inspiration by Bob Friedmann showing his excellent VIS and UV images on nikongear.com. I wondered how orchids would look like in simulated bee vision using my "multispectral in one shot" filter XBV2.
Here it is, simulated Bee Vision shot using XBV2 filter, high power UV flash, UV-Rodagon 5.6/105mm....and no focus shift.
[click on image to see a larger one]
