Recently converted to infrared: noisy and OOF

So I just got my camera back from life pixel today and I'm having some issues. All my photos I've taken are much noisier than they should be (at ISO 100) Is this normal? And my shots with my wide angle lens are OOF. I was really excited and now I'm really disappointed. I don't know what to do. Here's a 100% center crop sample. It was shot at 17mm, f11 and 100 ISO.

Edit: I should also add that this was shot on a tripod and the camera I had converted was my Rebel XT.

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Your camera will behave very differently with the converstion; auto-focus, exposure, etc, are all calibrated with the normal high-pass filter in place. Which conversion did you have done? Normal IR, full-spectrum, ... ?

Yes, this is pretty normal, there is a learning curve that you will need to go through to shoot IR.

In particular, IR is very different to visible light, particularly in the wavelength so you need to adjust the focus to suit. Some lenses have a red IR mark by the focus scale to aid in IR focusing, it used to be on almost all lenses but modern lenses often leave it off unfortunately. If you have it, focus normally and read off the distance showing at the normal focus mark, then (using manual focus) turn the focus ring until that distance lines up with the IR mark, focusing should now be correct for IR with that shot.

IR does often look noisy, but this is generally acceptable as it frequently complements the other-worldly look of the other IR attributes.

I seem to remember that you've got to manually focus when shooting IR. I think there's an IR scale on most Canon lens.

Lionstone wrote in post #5212082
Your camera will behave very differently with the converstion; auto-focus, exposure, etc, are all calibrated with the normal high-pass filter in place. Which conversion did you have done? Normal IR, full-spectrum, ... ?

I just have the normal IR filter. So is there no way to get it sharp then? Because I've seen plenty of sharp infrared images, particularly samples at life pixel, that are wide angle. So far, my shots seem sharp enough with my 28-75mm, but just not with the 10-20. Thanks for your help.

Dave

@ sandpiper and rubberhead - when you get your camera converted, the focus is adjusted so that auto-focus still works correctly. I appreciate your help though.

Dave

Here's another weird thing I don't get, I used the wide angle to shoot an object up close and that shot is properly in focus. So far it's only the wide landscape shots...

Okay, I took some more earlier and now I have some landscapes that are sharp. There definitely is a lot to this that I'm gonna have to figure out.

@ Lionstone - if you have any tips for me, I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

Dave

forsakenme720 wrote in post #5214848
Okay, I took some more earlier and now I have some landscapes that are sharp. There definitely is a lot to this that I'm gonna have to figure out.

@ Lionstone - if you have any tips for me, I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

Dave

Just get used to adjusting your shots.
I know LifePixel does their best to recalibrate your camera, but IR is still tricky. The focus won't be right at all focal lengths, and the metering will be off a lot of the time. I don't do a lot of infrared (I borrow a modified camera now and then), but I find myself dialing in positive exposure compensation on just about every shot, and I finally learned how to use the exposure bracketing function, too. Be sure to use a tripod.

There's nothing you can do about the noise except Noise Ninja (or whatever) if it bothers you on a particular shot.

Good luck!

how do they adjust the AF for the frequency of IR?

i think that is out, if you buy an 'L' it will come with the IR focus points on the scale (also on some nice non L lenses too)

i say shoot everything in manual

mzivtins wrote in post #5226272
how do they adjust the AF for the frequency of IR?

They don't. You focus manually.

I was positive that LifePixel re-calibrated the AF for you. I looked it up just now:
http://www.lifepixel.c​om …eautofocusworkf​orinfrared

They do re-calibrate, but it's for a particular lens at a particular f-stop. Which explains why it's off most of the time regardless.

forsakenme720 wrote in post #5214796
@ sandpiper and rubberhead - when you get your camera converted, the focus is adjusted so that auto-focus still works correctly. I appreciate your help though.

Dave

They calibrate it to a nifty fifty, yes. And noise is perfectly normal. Since IR is almost always landscape, photogs just shoot with a small aperture to compensate the focus difference.

chris_arnet wrote in post #5226554
They calibrate it to a nifty fifty, yes. And noise is perfectly normal. Since IR is almost always landscape, photogs just shoot with a small aperture to compensate the focus difference.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I've found from my tests so far. Of course, it turns out that most of my lenses produce a hot spot so I'm gonna be buying news lenses that I can't afford now... ugh.

chris_arnet wrote in post #5226554
They calibrate it to a nifty fifty, yes. And noise is perfectly normal. Since IR is almost always landscape, photogs just shoot with a small aperture to compensate the focus difference.

Yeah, stopping down has definitely been helping.