Infrared Photography

[DigitDan]

I've been reading about infrared photography and got all excited about trying it. I purchased a Hoya 72 infrared filter on Ebay. It arrived yesterday. I rushed home, screwed it on the end of my sigma 70-300, attached the lens to my Canon D10 went out to the backyard and turned the camera on. I looked thru the viewfinder to compose a picture and I saw nothing but black!!!!

I aimed the camera at the sun and saw this tiny red dot. that's all.

Ok.....so....what am I doing wrong

Digital Dan in Phoenix

[evilenglishman]

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[Sunil]

And this one too:

http://www.cliffshade.com/dpfwiw/ir.htm

[mattchase]

Dan,

I can't really go into too much as I am at work right now, but just wanted to say that you should never look at the sun through an IR filter! Since the filter is blocking out most of the visible light, when you look at the sun you are getting a full blast of all the bad rays of light, which can damage your eyes.

I do have some experience with IR and the 10D, so will post later tonight when I get home, if some one else doesn't beat me to it.

[mattchase]

Hey again. So, ok, IR with the 10D. Yes it works. As you noticed, you pretty much can't see anything through the viewfinder once the filter is in place, so you need to compose your scene before putting the filter on. If you are lucky, you have a lens that has an IR marking on it, which will help you determine where to focus. Otherwise, you will need to stick with smaller apertures and practice practice practice.

I have a Harris and Harris IR filter (which I think is similar to a Hoya R72), and on a bright sunny day my typical exposures are ISO 100-200, f5.6, and about 3-6 seconds. I shoot in Raw, because one of the tricks to getting interesting false color images begins with tweaking the white balance on the computer. I have pasted the steps below, this information is from DPR, compliments of Chris (http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/re...essage=5216393).

"You can do it with Photoshop's (Version 5.5 or later) Channel Mixer. Select the red channel and set the reds to zero and the blues to 100% instead. Then select the blue channel and do just the opposite. Don't modify the green channel.

If you only have Photoshop 5.0 LE, you can use http://www.irfanview.com (Freeware) instead and change the color scheme from RGB to BGR, which is the same.

But it's important, that you have an IR color image, that was taken with custom white balance, so that you get brown skies and blueish or cyan plants, which depends on the cam used. With the D30 plants get blueish, with the G1 and many other cams plants become cyan in IR. Both false color schemes work, important is the rusty brown sky. "

Using this method, you get images that look like this...

(I am still learning how to do this, but am pretty happy with my results so far.)

And of course, you can always just convert to black and white too, which can give some cool looking images. Other things to note: look for greens and whites. Clouds get ballistically white, and green things turn various shades of white (in black and white). These two items seem to show off what IR can do the most, and I'm sure there are other things that do as well, but I am not sure what else. Skin takes on a soft, unreal smooth look. And haze vanishes...so IR is great for shooting hazy cities when you plan on making it a black and white image.

[DigitDan]

Thanks everyone for all your help!!! I took a couple of pictures of my backyard yesterday with the filter. I was pleased with the results.

Dan in Phoenix

[rblissett]

Thanks for posting that image mattchase. I own the d60 the older sibling to the 10d. I've read that these cameras weren't capable of IR as they use a CMOS sensor as opposed to the stander CCD type for image capture. Clearly you've proven the nay-sayers wrong.

I'm off to buy my hoya R72! Ok maybe not today, but I'm convinced I can make it work now .

Do you or anyone else here have any other pics using either the d60 or 10d. I would love to see them.

Rob

[Gibmeister]

This is my first attempt. Still trying to get the focusing right. I am still not sure that the10D does a good job with infrared. Used the Hoya R72. 8sec, @ F16 ISO200
[img]http://images.fotopic.net/?id=855279&outx=600&oq=0[img]

[rblissett]

Gibmeister wrote:
This is my first attempt. Still trying to get the focusing right. I am still not sure that the10D does a good job with infrared. Used the Hoya R72. 8sec, @ F16 ISO200

I've heard that focusing should be done prior to taking the shot, then putting it in manual focus, and then install the filter.

I've also heard another great tip which can be applied to all long exposure shots, and that's to use the timer to trigger the photo. Makes sense for me as manually pushing the shutter button can cause a small amount of vibration which might cause your shot to look slightly blury or even out of focus.

The background building could probably use some PS assistence but clearly your getting the IR effect.

Rob

[mattchase]

11:22am Pacific time: I appoligize, I have my site hosted on my server at work, and currently it appears to be down. It will eventually reboot itself and come back online, but until then the pictures won't load.
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I didn't do much IR with my D60, but did find this one shot from my D60, I think this was actually the first time I ever tried it. I have heard that the D60 is not as sensitive to IR as the 10D is, but this image shows that the D60 will still work.



And here are a series of shots that are the same view, but shot with and without IR filters, shown in color and converted to grayscale. All of these done with the 10D.

The normal view in color shot at f11, 1/200th, ISO 100.


This is the image above converted to grayscale (no IR filter).


The shot using the IR filter, then converted to grayscale. This was shot at f5.6, 6 seconds, ISO 100.


And finally, the IR image above done as a false color image.


So, while the 10D may not be as good as some of the older 2mp-3mp digicams, it is still very capable of doing this type of photography.

[rblissett]

Just and FYI for those looking to simulate IR using photoshop channels... I downloaded this from a guy over at the dpreview.com forum. Anyway something to be played with. Haven't really been able to get a seriously close IR fake but this seemed ok.



Anyway if your interested you can check out his site at http://www.geocities.com/glowluzid/

[Longwatcher]

rblissett wrote:
Thanks for posting that image mattchase. I own the d60 the older sibling to the 10d. I've read that these cameras weren't capable of IR as they use a CMOS sensor as opposed to the stander CCD type for image capture. Clearly you've proven the nay-sayers wrong.

I'm off to buy my hoya R72! Ok maybe not today, but I'm convinced I can make it work now .

Do you or anyone else here have any other pics using either the d60 or 10d. I would love to see them.

Rob

Just to let you know, The D60 is fairly useless for IR photography. The 10D sensor works, the D60 doesn't (at least not very well). The Hoya R72 will let in some red light, but not enough. To get it to work at all you will need 20 second settings versus 2-4 seconds with the 10D.

I have both and have tested with same lens and filter with very disappointing results with D60.

[tikkeltokkel]

would a polariser filter work with an infrared filter?

[Gibmeister]

Tim or others, When you did the infrared photos with your 10D did you change any of the settings on the 10D? Contrast, sharpnes, saturation, or white balance?

Thanks

Gib

[rblissett]

Hey Longwatcher, thanks for the advice... I've pretty much forgotten about even worrying about it.

My friend has the sony, uh, can't remeber what it's called but it's their high end one. Anyway, from my research this is a superiour (sp?) camera when it comes to IR. It even uses an IR emitter for night shots so obviously it's sensor is very capable of reading IR.

So anyway, we'll be trading every now and again.

Later,

Rob

If you want to see some unbelievable IR shots just check out this link: http://www.pbase.com/zylen