Fun with a UV flashlight

[rjkrejci]

I bought a $13 395nm UV flashlight on a whim from Amazon (Loftek 51 395 nm). Despite having a kessil 160 with the color control, I am actually quite pleased exploring the pure fluorescence with the flashlight...colors just pop out with isolated UV.

I took a few pics using my macro lens while the kessil was on full blue and shining the flashlight on the subject for extra pop. Here are some pics of some of the most unique specimens. I tried to make the colors represent what I visually see rather then the super-saturated images on the coral websites. I really love the blastos under the UV light. You can see the right-hand side of it did not have the flashlight on it and the green does not show up much at all.

Tangerine Leptoseris

Blasto

Miami Hurricane Chalice

 

[Lmax8rn]

Nice!

 

[cherubfish pair]

Interesting. I see those lights elsewhere and they're like $45.

 

[ReefWreak]

Oh man, can't wait till my macro lens gets here (I caved finally!).

I've been trying to shoot with just RoyalBlue LEDs on, with a yellow filter over the lens on my standard lens, and I'm almost getting the colors, but not quite... I wonder if the UV flashlight would help even more...

I also tried flash covered in single, double, and triple layers of blue, and it didn't make a difference, colors were all off.

Your pics were great, mind sharing the settings (and camera/lens/lighting)? Only question/gripe is the ISO. Is it ISO that I see in the pics, or is it just a function of the exposure/fluorescence?

 

[rjkrejci]

In order to get max fluorescence, you really need the UV wavelength light source, so I'm sure the UV flashlight would make everything glow much more than what you've tried.


I used a Fuji XT-1 with the 60mm f2.4 macro (a 1:2 macro lens) set to aperture priority f8 for more DOF. Had Auto ISO on with min shutter set to 1/100, allowing the ISO to float (between 3200 and 6400 in the above pictures). Lighting was strictly the Kessil 160 as the fullest blue setting and about 25% power and the aforementioned flashlight shined on the subject. About a stop underexposed to prevent any clipping of colors. All handheld, manual focus. definitely RAW setting.

Used lightroom for initial processing. Slid the color temp slider all the way to max. Tried to keep everything neutral otherwise with little sharpening nor noise reduction. Reduced contrast and reduced highlights to prevent clipping of the colors, which keeps them more true looking and easier to process later.

I export that to Photoshop (16 bit TIFF) and do the final color and brightness adjustments. This is where it's truly a matter of taste. My goal was to try to represent what I saw the best I could.

The ISO was indeed high to keep the shutter speed up and the aperture small to keep at least some DOF, always a struggle with macros. I should have used a tripod for longer exposures, especially on these subjects, and especially while trying to hold the flashlight at the same time. The XT1 has a good sensor (on par with some of the best APSC cameras out there) so a little noise reduction before reducing the image size helps quite a bit.

I think the biggest piece of advice it to shoot raw, and don't clip the colors. Since the majority of the scene is dark, the camera will want to overexpose.

 

[myarmolich]

Awesome pictures!

 

[Webmanny]

Oh man, can't wait till my macro lens gets here (I caved finally!).

I've been trying to shoot with just RoyalBlue LEDs on, with a yellow filter over the lens on my standard lens, and I'm almost getting the colors, but not quite... I wonder if the UV flashlight would help even more...

I also tried flash covered in single, double, and triple layers of blue, and it didn't make a difference, colors were all off.

Your pics were great, mind sharing the settings (and camera/lens/lighting)? Only question/gripe is the ISO. Is it ISO that I see in the pics, or is it just a function of the exposure/fluorescence?

Try orange lens filter instead of yellow. Here are some pictures I took with that filter. Yellow did not work for me.

 

[ReefWreak]

Try orange lens filter instead of yellow. Here are some pictures I took with that filter. Yellow did not work for me.

That looks great, thanks for the tip!

I also noticed that you posted reasonably sized pics from your google picasaweb/google+ account. Did you resize it before it was uploaded, or have you figured out how to link to a specific size photo like they used to have (I can't find that option anymore in picasaweb).