Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Yup, that wee bump on the end is the camera. :->

I used to have an 85mm f/2 that I really, really liked (it got stolen), and I've used a 135mm f/2.5 screwmount handheld in candlelight (TMZ is my friend; so is Delta 3200). And of course there's the 50mm f/1.4 when I don't need telephoto. But I keep wishing that my 200mm and my 100-300mm zoom were faster than f/4 or that my 400mm were faster than f/5.6.

Though as a Canon shooter you theoretically have access (assuming enough time to hunt for it and enough money to pay for it) to the 50mm f/0.9 lens, the ultimate low-light normal lens. Even with a 2x converter, it'd still function like a f/1.8! AFAIK, the fastest Pentax is f/1.2.

As for a DSLR, I got to borrow one for an afternoon several months ago, and ooooh that was fun. The one I played with was a Nikon; if I had the money to buy one, I'd be looking at Pentax first, to be able to use the lenses I already own.

I'm still planning on making a couple of those, as well, for when the lighting of the scene itself isn't what I'm trying to capture, though that pretty much limits me to black and white (of course, so does shooting at 6400 ASA, which is the solution I already use).

Putting an IR filter in front of a Xenon strobe results in a) an awfully low guide number (I shot a roll at home that way to determine that -- I'll have to go find those negs to refresh my memory regarding what the result was), and b) just enough visible light leakage through the filter that others see a red light blink over me. I haven't used it enough to find out whether other people find the red blink distracting or not.

I'm hoping to get more range out of a whole mess o' IR LEDs mounted next to each other. (I'm not sure how much I can get away with overdriving an LED for a really short time like that, but also don't know whether I'll need to overdrive them in the first place -- I get the impression that IR LEDs are a lot brighter than visible LEDs.) I just need to a) get around to building the darned thing, and b) find out experimentally whether the LEDs put out enough energy in the wavelengths Kodak HIE is sensitive to that most of the power I dump into them will wind up being useful. (How narrow is the output band of an IR LED?)