Meteora is one of my most visited locations, due to its unique landscape beauty and historical interest (there lots of monasteries built on the huge rock formations.
I have shot hundreds of images there, and the best ones are during early morning or before sunset (the rule for landscape photography !). On my last visit during noon, the sun was harsh so I decided to make some infrared photos.
Although I can shoot IR images handheld with the Leica M8, lately I bring the tripod with me, so I can shoot at f/11 and be sure that my image is sharp and has large DoF. The 21mm Voigtlander remains my favorite IR lens, but I have also stated using the Leica Summarit 35mm. It’s a much better performer, and on the M8 is a 47mm equivalent. I am using this lens to shoot mutliple photos and stitch them later using Autopano Pro. This way I end up with a file which has enough megapixels to create a large print.
I recently printed some of my best IR photos and when I went for sizes over 60cm wide, the image quality was not what I wanted to. That is to be expected since the M8 is a 10mp camera and also there is evident noise when shooting IR with this camera even at base ISO. So, stitching is the way to go for making large prints. It does not always work, but for the majority of my images the results are great.
If I wanted to avoid stitching, I could use either the Fuji GSW690 or my large format camera with Rollei infrared film, but it’s a very thin emulsion, difficult to handle and prone to scratches. That means a significant amount of time in post process, and that is something I want to avoid. Therefore, stitching is the easiest way for me.
Enjoy the rest of the images.
(c)2014 Konstantinos Besios. All rights reserved.