Autumn Emerging – One-Shot Story

In September, 35mmc contributor SKLBA posted an excellent review of the quirky, 21-year-old Sony Cybershot DSC-F828 bridge digital. Since I don’t see a way to include photos in Comments, I’ll post my comment here as a One-Shot Story!

I’ve never used an F828, but I did take the above digital-infrared photo of maple leaves with a circa-2001 F707. It (and the “in-between” F717) had shorter 5x zooms and fewer megapixels, but in many respects, the F707, F717 and F828 were very similar.

SKLBA covered the pros and cons of the F828 very well. But I’d like to add that the Olympus C-8080 WZ is a very-high-quality (and much easier to carry) 8-megapixel CCD alternative to the F828. (Though it doesn’t compete in IR capability.)  And if one wants to explore digital-infrared, Nikon’s 3.34-megapixel Coolpix 990 (mentioned here and here) offers a beautiful entry-level alternative with a more flexible rotating-body/lens system. But before shooting IR or UV with the 990, its hot mirror must be removed (here are YouTube instructions for doing that).

Returning to the above photo, I captured it with the F707’s Nightshot mode, on a bright summer day, and without the “magnet hack” (which I didn’t know about at the time). Those leaves were in deep shade, but it was still a challenging shoot. The camera had to be tripod-mounted. And because the lens automatically opened wide to f/2, I had to stack several ND filters in front of it to avoid burning out the sensor (even when shooting through a dark 720nm band-pass filter).

I then converted the file to black-and-white, and digitally colorized a few leaves to depict the coming of fall. In fact, Boston’s charitable Society of St. Vincent de Paul just auctioned off a 13×19-inch print of “Autumn Emerging” for $100. It went to a collector who “had just the right spot for it on his wall.” So even today, I think Sony’s F-series cameras can still do lovely, useful work.

FINAL NOTE: SKLBA’s infrareds were stunning. And slipping transformed and un-transformed “Transformers” cameras into his featured image was WAY cool!

–Dave Powell is a Westford, Mass., writer and avid amateur photographer.

Share this post: