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Light is electromagnetic radiation. In particular it’s that part of the electromagnetic spectrum that our eyes are sensitive to: it ranges in wavelength from about 400nm (violet) to 700nm (red). Beyond red light we come to infrared (IR). Like ordinary light, infrared (or specifically near infrared) can be focussed by glass lenses and recorded by the CCD in a digital camera.

Infrared photography can be used to produce interesting ghostly effects, but all cameras are different so test yours before buying any pricey gear. (Click the photo for a high resolution version.)

By excluding all visible light from the camera while allowing infrared to pass, it’s possible to take photographs using infrared alone. White clouds can appear against an almost black sky and green vegetation comes out so white that it almost glows. The end result has been variously described as otherworldly, ethereal and ghostly.

If you don’t want to fake the effect (see ‘Fake Infrared Ektachrome’ later in the article), you’ll need to collect together a little bit of kit to do this right. First, infrared photographs usually require a long exposure so you’ll need a tripod. However, if you don’t already have one, hold off on buying one until you’ve tried a test infrared photograph. If you just happen to have a camera that’s unusually sensitive to infrared you might get away with using it handheld, but it’s unlikely. Small tripods start at about £10.

Choosing a filter

The next consideration is an infrared filter. For your first attempts at infrared photography we suggested that you use the Hoya R72 filter. Its cut-off point is only just into the infrared spectrum, which means it actually lets a small amount of visible red light through too. If you’re pleased with your initial foray into infrared photograph and want to go one stage further, you could try other infrared filters that have cut-off points further into the infrared spectrum. The infrared effect will be even more pronounced and dramatic, but exposure times will be increased.

The Hoya R72 has a 50 per cent cut-off point of 720nm. The Kodak Wratten #87 has a corresponding figure of 795nm and excludes all visible light. The Wratten #87C has an 850nm 50 per cent cut-off and this is probably as far as you’d want to go. Although Wratten filters are supplied as 75mm square gelatine sheets that aren’t easy to attach to your lens, manufacturers of screw-in filters often refer to an equivalent Wratten number.

But before you buy, make sure it’s actually going to work with your camera…

Preparatory work

Although CCDs are extremely sensitive to infrared, many digital cameras aren’t. This is because manufacturers usually put a filter in the camera to block infrared, as it would otherwise upset the colour balance. These filters aren’t 100 per cent effective so some infrared still reaches the CCD, but exactly how sensitive a camera is to infrared varies greatly. Your first job is to check that your camera is sensitive enough to be usable.

The unusually high reflectivity of grass and foliage is responsible for the unreal look of infrared photographs. (Click the photo for a high resolution version.)

The easiest way to do this is to ask a local photographic shop if you can try an infrared filter before you buy. Here we’re talking about a filter that allows infrared to pass through while blocking visible light. Remember that the light meter might be wildly inaccurate under these conditions, so if you don’t get an image on your first attempt, try over-exposing by several stops if necessary. Another option is to use a TV or DVD remote control unit, since all such devices emit infrared light. If your camera allows the LCD panel to be used as a viewfinder, view the infrared emitter at the front end of the remote on the LCD panel and press one of the remote’s buttons in a dark room. A bright dot indicates that the camera has reasonable infrared sensitivity. If you have a digital SLR that can’t use its LCD panel as a viewfinder you’ll have to try a test photograph, again bearing in mind that you might have to over-expose.

Once you’ve discovered that your camera can be used for infrared photography and bought an infrared filter, you can start to get a better feel for what sort of exposure you’ll need under various conditions. Screw the filter onto your lens and try some test shots. The exposure will be much longer than normal and could be several seconds, even on a bright day. On the basis of these trials you can decide whether there’s any chance of shooting handheld or if you’ll need to use a tripod. The other piece of information you’ll glean from this test is whether the camera’s light meter is accurate in infrared and, if not, by how much you’ll need to over-expose.

Capturing the invisible

If you’ve got this far we’ll assume that you have an adequately sensitive camera, have bought an infrared filter and have decided whether you need to use a tripod. Now you’re ready to pack your gear up and try your hand at some infrared photography. First, though, a word on your choice of a subject.

We don’t want to be too prescriptive because this can stifle creativity, but perhaps we can offer a few suggestions to get you started. Remember the unique characteristics of infrared photographs – the blackening of blue skies and ghostly white rendering of grass and tree leaves – and pick your scene accordingly. Trees in the summer against a blue sky might look quite dramatic whereas an overcast scene of a bracken-covered moor almost certainly won’t. Try looking at the work of others for inspiration – you’ll find no shortage of infrared photo galleries on the web. You’ll soon see that some subjects seem to work whereas other just don’t, and you’ll also discover that some scenes are almost compulsory for infrared photographers. Perhaps the all-time favourite cliché is the graveyard, which seems to be perfectly suited to the ghostly look of infrared.

This might be a cliché, but every infrared photographer has to shoot a graveyard sooner or later. (Click the photo for a high resolution version.)

Taking a shot should now be plain sailing but there’s one possible snag – you might not be able to see anything in the viewfinder with the infrared filter attached. If you have an independent optical viewfinder you’ll be OK, but you may or may not be able to see the scene in an LCD viewfinder, depending on the camera. With a conventional DSLR the viewfinder will almost certainly be blank. If you aren’t able to see through the viewfinder, you’ll have to frame the shot before fixing the filter –so you’ll have to use a tripod.

Infrared photographs will rarely be up to scratch straight out of the camera, so image processing will almost always be necessary. First, although infrared photograph is a form of black-and-white photography, your photograph probably has some colour cast. Often the raw photograph will be in shades or red, so your first job is to convert it to greyscale. Even if the result does appear to be black and white, you should still to convert it to greyscale to ensure accurate blacks and whites. Then, because high contrast is often important in infrared photography, you might decide to exaggerate it by artificially increasing the contrast. Ensure you only ever edit a copy – leave the original intact so that you can try something different later if you want.

Infrared colour photography

Infrared is normally considered a form of black-and-white photography, so infrared colour photography sounds like a contradiction in terms. However, it’s possible to create a photograph that contains some colour information yet has the tonal quality of an infrared photograph.

First, take a pair of photographs of the scene, one in infrared and the other normally in visible light. This means that the camera must be mounted on a tripod and that nothing in shot is moving. It’s also important to use the same aperture for the two shots so that the depth of field is the same. Try to work as quickly as possible so that the lighting or slow-moving clouds don’t change much between the shots. You need to add or remove a filter between shots and probably alter the exposure, which could be tricky. It’s a good idea to give this process a bit of thought before trying it out for real.

Process the infrared photograph as already described for ordinary infrared photography. Now, using your photo-editing software, split the ordinary photograph into either the HLS (Hue, Lightness, Saturation) or HSB (Hue, Saturation, Brightness) channels – the two are slightly different so try experimenting with both. Splitting channels is a feature of most fully featured photo editing packages, although it might be absent on entry-level products. Each channel appears as a greyscale image, of which one – lightness or brightness – defines the lightness. Since we want to impart the tonal qualities of an infrared image, discard the brightness or lightness channel and put the infrared image in its place before recombining the channels. The result should be quite an eye-opener.

Combining an ordinary photograph with an infrared shot can create dramatic colour effects. (Click the photo for a high resolution version.)

This is just one way of creating a colour infrared image and the possibilities are limited only by your imagination. Here’s another method that has been widely used, but be aware that the exact result will differ from one camera to another – so you might end up with a different effect entirely. And if the infrared image as it comes out of your camera appears black and white this method won’t work at all. Take an infrared photograph but, instead of converting it to a greyscale image, use your photo manipulation package to correct the white balance. Although the colours won’t be correct it will result in some parts of the photograph coming out almost white instead of shades of pink. The sky will appear red or brown, which looks most odd. To correct this you need to use the channel splitting and recombining trick. But instead of splitting to HLS or HSB, split the photograph to RGB (Red, Green, Blue) and then recombine with the Red and Blue channels swapped. With a bit of luck you’ll end up with a blue sky, while any foliage will have a slight sepia hue to its ghostly appearance.

Fake an infrared photograph

For many, the appeal of infrared photography is that it’s a natural phenomenon that can’t be recreated by digital wizardry. However, if you don’t want to shell out on an infrared filter you can get a similar (albeit less dramatic) effect using image-processing software.

Take an ordinary colour photograph and make sure it’s one with a really dark blue sky and light, well-lit foliage. Using your photo-editing software, split the channels to RGB and then discard the blue channel, recombine the remaining two channels and convert to greyscale. This will have the same effect as putting a red filter on the camera – it darkens the sky but not as dramatically as happens with an infrared filter. The glowing white appearance of the foliage will be absent, though, so let’s try something different. Again split the colour photograph to RGB and discard the blue channel. Before recombining, though, try increasing the brightness of the green channel. Now when you recombine you’ll find that the foliage has become lighter but, because all but the darkest azure blue skies contain some green content, the sky won’t be as dark. A degree of trial and error is required to find a compromise that comes close to the genuine infrared effect.

Simulate infrared ektachrome

For many years Kodak produced a film called Infrared Ektachrome, which produced a colour infrared image. That image was very different from the colour images we’ve discussed in the main part of this article because the film was intended for scientific rather than artistic purposes. Nevertheless, some mainstream photographers did experiment with it for its novelty value, and it’s quite possible to emulate it digitally.

An ordinary colour photograph is made up of images in the three primary colours – red, green and blue. Infrared can be though of as another colour so Infrared Ektachrome recorded an image in three alternative primary colours – infrared, red and green. Because our eyes can’t see the infrared, each primary colour was translated so that infrared appeared as red, red as green and green as blue. Because our eyes can only handle three primary colours, blue was discarded by putting a yellow filter over the lens. This combination of infrared and colour was used in aerial photography because it showed up features than couldn’t be seen in visible light alone. Normal crops, for example, appeared red because they’re highly reflective of infrared whereas diseased crops looked blue because they only reflected green light.

A different way of combining a visible and an infrared shot gives results reminiscent of Infrared Ektachrome film. (Click the photo for a high resolution version.)

To create this effect you need to take a pair of photographs, one in visible light and one in the infrared and combine them in a photo manipulation package. This time, however, split the visible image to RGB, discard the blue channel and recombine with the infrared image in place or the red channel, the red in place of the green, and the green in place of the blue.

Near and far

Infrared photography is often thought as a means of seeing in the dark. But the far infrared radiation (or heat) emitted by living creatures, is recorded. It’s also possible to use near infrared to photograph in the dark, but because most objects don’t emit near infrared you need a source of infrared illumination. A flashgun with an infrared filter over it will do nicely.

Although many insects can see ultraviolet, few creatures have vision that extends into the infrared. Research has suggested that birds of prey can see longer wavelengths than humans, but they probably don’t perceive this near infrared as an extra colour – so you have the potential to capture scenes that no living creature has ever seen.

Data is a vital in the form of information and data entry is the procedure of entering data in to any source either online or offline. It can be done manually or automatically, in manual entering a person will enter a data and in automatic software or tool with enter data. There are numerous types of data entry such as insurance claim, legal formalities, and entry for cards, books, and images. Two major types of it are online and offline.

Online entering of data is useful for entering e-books, entering websites, keeping track of credit and debit card transactions, submitting and processing online forms, entering images in various formats. Entering of data into software applications, database is necessary now for printing or effective use of data as information. It is also useful for keeping track of several hundred websites or URL collection etc. Offline data entry is useful in document entry, excel entry, MS access entry etc. for quick access.

Image entry is also one of the useful methods of entering data. In image entry images should entered to include photographs, attachments, magazine, yellow pages, novels, books, scanned images is necessary for card entry also. Insurance claim entry is method to enter data of insurance holders for the companies and record of holders data and records.

Well known data entry methods also include text, numeric and alphanumeric entry. These all are also done either automatically or manually. In any of the form either text, numeric or alphanumeric entry can be done from scanned images, entry in encyclopedia, dictionaries, warranty periods, market research data, reports, questionnaires, survey form etc.

Individual or a company knows importance of data entry in this era of information. Many times it requires to process data which may internal or external. It also required for managing and increasing existing client database, type recorded audio in any application, word or spreadsheet, E-books and websites, or keeping track of transactions of cards and insurance claims. It is important for any routine tasks of organization.

There are several websites (i.e. http://www.hitechexport.com) which are extremely useful for small or emerging organizations for data entry requirements.

Article Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com

About the Author:
Mark Peterson is a quality controller at Hi-Tech Export A fastest growing company that handle all kind of small or large data entry projects. They have completed 17 years in this data entry field successfully. They assure about their 99.98% accurate data entry services.

Love it or hate it (hint: you should hate it), Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen was one of the most successful films of last year – having earned around $800 million at the time of writing. And it would probably never have happened, had it not been for a bunch of young men talking about toys on the internet in the mid 1990s.

Want to own every Optimus Prime ever made? You’ll need a few thousand pounds and a garage to keep them in. Picture: Ryan Yzquierdo, Seibertron.com

The precedent was set by enthusiastic discussion in the letters pages of the official Transformers comic, published by Marvel from 1984 until 1991. From this sprang unofficial fanclubs, gatherings and trading circles, all resolutely passionate about an ever-growing line of toys that changed from robots to vehicles (and assorted technology). How to obtain the rare ones, how to reconcile the huge contradictions between the storylines of the various comics and cartoon series, whether Grimlock could possibly beat Galvatron in a fair fight… Many of these enthusiasts also proved to be early adopters of internet discussion, creating a raft of fansites and bulletin boards in the mid-to-late 90s that finally allowed the global Transformers community to get together. Today, that’s grown into a clutch of professional, commercial sites that provide a growing army of fans with up-to-the-minute news about new figures or movie rumours, and extensive photo galleries of the rare toys they yearn to own. ” The fan websites themselves are very competitive in nature and we all strive to make the best sites available,” says Ryan Yzquierdo, owner of the enormous and award-winning US fansite Seibertron.com. “The online community consumes the information we provide as fast as possible and is extremely active.” From the outside looking in, it’s a bizarre phenomenon – so why did it happen?

Fanboy origins

“As its simplest concept Transformers aims at various things that boys, and indeed men, like: Robots, aliens, cars, planes,” thinks Steve Mapes, owner of www.transformertoys.co.uk, a respected British fansite that’s been active since 1999. “It then takes these interests and produces, in a toy form, basically two toys in one. Rather than buying a toy robot and a car, kids can have one toy that is both and changes between the two. This isn’t enough by itself though. There have been, and indeed still are, plenty of other transforming robot lines out there, none of which have been as popular or successfully marketed as the Transformers. A large part of this is the characters and fictional universe that has been shaped over the past 25 years.”

Comics, cartoons, most recently films have all contributed to a vast backstory for the entire range of toys. “It was really smart of the people involved with Transformers way back at the beginning to create stories and personalities for the individual Transformers,” thinks Yzquierdo. “These weren’t just ‘robots’… each of them was a living machine with a personality and abilities and skills. This allowed for people to connect to these unique characters in a way that wasn’t common with robot characters at the time. Because of this, people really bonded with the characters which creates a special loyalty to the characters, the products and ultimately the brand as a whole.”

Even though the brand regularly changed enormously, forever seeking to avoid the retail death that claims most toylines eventually. The blocky vehicles of the 80s became the more complicated but controversial bio-mechanical animals of the mid-90s Beast Wars, then a welcome return to vehicles with R.I.D., Armada and beyond, and now the hyper-realistic, hyper-detailed movie line toys. There isn’t any other action figure line that’s been as consistently successful, or that has drawn the attention of so many adults as well as children.

Classic characters like Megatron are regularly redesigned and updated, often purely to please old-school fans. Picture: Ryan Yzquierdo, Seibertron.com

Who, in turn, wanted to share their knowledge, opinions and collections with like-minded souls. It was in the Beast Wars era that the online community first really sprouted, but not always that happily. There was a deep division between a new generation of Transformers fans who loved the Beast-based toys and the surprisingly smart animated series, and the old guard who were outraged at the change from Optimus Prime to Optimus Primal. “Truck not monkey!” went the battlecry, referring to the hero Autobot leader’s reimagined ‘alt-mode’. Anger being one of the cornerstones of internet discussion, such conflict only grew – and to this day, some fansites refuse to acknowledge the existence of others. “Yeah, there’s still some of the typical internet drama from time-to-time, but for the most part I’d say that the community is pretty good natured,” says Seibertron.com’s Ryan Yzquierdo. “Except for when pics leak from the next new Transformers series. We all think it’s going to be the end of the brand, but then fully accept whatever the latest thing is after we realize just how cool it is.”

Fan collaboration

Indeed, the throughline of passion for the toys remained, however, and the Beast Wars era even saw the animated show’s creators fraternising with and seeking advice from long-term fans on forums. As the millennium ended, fandom boomed – and changed. “My brother and I created our first website Transformers At The Moon back in October 1999, a few months after getting internet access at home”, says Mapes. ” At the time we decided that there was a distinct lack of websites with photographs of the Transformers toys especially many that we owned at the time. One of the main things we would use the internet for at that time was to search for toys that we did have in our collection, especially the much sort after Japanese figures.” This is crucial to the continuance and rise of the random – without the internet, obtaining out-of-print or international-only Transformers was crushingly difficult. Suddenly, there was an easy way to obtain the impossible, and for collectors to thus have collections.

“eBay allowed people the opportunity to easily find desired products which they might have previously only been able to find at specialty shows” explains Ryan Yzquierdo. “It also allowed people to connect from all over the world. It made it easy for a guy in Canada to purchase a toy from someone in the Netherlands. I’ve always thought that accessibility to a product helps increase one’s loyalty to a product. If you can’t find what you want, you move on to something else. If you can easily buy something which interests you, it only encourages that person-to-product relationship, which I’m sure has helped out the Transformers brand over the years.”

Optimus Primal, figurehead of the Beast Wars line, did not satisfy many hardcore enthusiasts. Picture: Ryan Yzquierdo, Seibertron.com

There are layers and layers of figure rarity, meaning there are absurd treasure hunts where everyday collectors fear to tread. Steve Mapes is an particular aficionado of the Lucky Draw Transformers, a very limited, usually gold or silver chrome-coated toy variant that is produced in Japan exclusively as competition prizes – he runs another site specifically dedicated to these at www.luckydrawtransformers.com. “The figures themselves tend to turn up in Japan first and are then quickly snapped up by either Hong Kong or US collectors. Some find their way onto the Japanese Yahoo Auctions website where they are normally won by overseas bidders using bidding service accounts, however others are sold in stores in places like Akihabara. Due to the limited quantity, some can be limited to 3 in the world – these figures can fetch into four figures and so the dealers tend to contact people directly who they have dealt with in the past to see if they are interested in those items. If they are not, then they tend to end up on eBay. A lot of the time it is a case of contacting the right person at the right time and building up a good relationship with them.”

Changing faces

That’s the deepest depths of fandom, however, where it turns into industry as well as enthusiasm. What about the general online community? “It consists of all sorts of people now”, claims Ryan Yzquierdo. “I am fascinated at each annual Transformers convention at how the ‘face’ of the community has changed over the past 15 years. At one time, it consisted mostly of young men, maybe 18 to 25. Now, I see women, families, middle-aged people, tweens, and even some grandparents partaking in this hobby. Sure, it is still dominated by men in their 20s, but that majority has slipped dramatically over the past decade.” Mapes agrees that the demographic stereotypes are gradually eroding: “With people interacting more at a social networking levels real-world friendships are also on the rise and there have been relationships and indeed marriages that have come out of people meeting on message boards around the world with a common interest of Transformers.”

The Michael Bay films might have outraged critics, but they’ve certainly accelerated the growth of this online Transformers community. They’ve also changed it – change forever being a double-edged sword. “There is no denying that that have had a huge impact in changing what was, for many, a secret hobby or interest, into something that is perhaps a little more socially accepted” thinks Mapes. “You can walk down the street and see people walking around with Transformers symbols on their T-shirts, find merchandise in many more stores and see a line that was simply viewed as a kids’ line be discussed by people of a huge age range on message board and forums that are not specially related to Transformers.” The existing fans are split down the middle about this – half overjoyed that their hobby has been essentially validated by the mainstream (with a resultant explosion in available Transformers products), and half feeling it’s diminished and undermined, both by Bay’s insect-like redesigns of the characters they love, and by now having to share their special interest with the rest of the world.

Hasbro’s tendency to repaint and remodel its figures keeps completist fans out of pocket. Picture: Ryan Yzquierdo, Seibertron.com

At the same time, the 1980s ‘Generation One’ characters are regularly referenced and redesigned in new toys and comics, a direct result of Transformers owners Hasbro being well aware of the size and passion of the online community. They’re not just a bunch of silly, annoying men on the internet: they’re a force that has a large disposable income and that will spread hype for free. They’ve even managed to attract the attention of Michael Bay. The explosion-obsessed director largely seems unconcerned about honoring Transformers’ quarter-century history, but was swayed enough by online appeals to let Peter Cullen, the voice of Optimus Prime in the 1980s cartoon series, reprise the role in the two 21st century live-action movies. It may be easy to sneer at people who remain this fascinated by transforming robot toys even in adulthood – but there’s no denying the sheer potency of the online community they’ve created.