Valentine’s Day Roses

Nikon D50 Infrared; 1/100 s @ f/1.8, ISO 400

Valentine’s Roses at Whole Foods Market has become an annual tradition. They have a wonderful selection of varieties, and they’re always fresh. This year, I happened to have my camera with me and since it was a beautiful, sunny Monday, I had equipped it with a Hoya R72 infrared filter.


On the way back to the car I caught a glimpse of these perched in the shopping cart and said, “why not”. Composing blind and using the autofocus of the AF-S NIKKOR 35mm f/1.8, this is one of the images I captured. A little processing in L*a*b* revealed this complementary tritone color scheme.

Unprocessed D50 infrared image

The D50’s ability to achieve a custom white balance through the infrared filter allows you to create images which require little or no processing. Unprocessed, color images take on a monochromatic appearance with just a subtle hint of color information. Their inclination towards blue gives them a somewhat cyanotype character, which in itself is quite pleasing. Many times only subtle adjustments to contrast and saturation will yield a pleasing image with a color rendition that’s “native” to this particular camera.

A similar situation occurs with the somewhat less sensitive Nikon D90. Its “native” images are skewed more to the magenta side of the spectrum, and produce pleasing sepia-toned image with adjustments to contrast and saturation. When processed as false-color images, they tend to be a little more grainy that the more sensitive D50, and motion blur is more common.