Click Thumbnails to Enlarge
Shooting Infrared
By Andrew James
Techniques
30 June 2011 18:03
Several years ago I had an old Digital SLR converted so that it took infrared images (courtesy of Advanced Camera Services). I wrote an article about in the February 2009 issue of Practical Photography. Well, if you followed my advice back then and had a camera adapted then here’s a timely reminder that this is a great time to use it…
IR photography works best when two ingredients come together – lots of vegetation and sunlight. The more sunlight there is the more IR light there is bouncing around. Foliage like leaves or grass reflect IR light and in your final image it’ll glow like frost. It’s both effective and slightly surreal.
A camera that has been converted has had its low pass filter removed and replaced by a 720nm (nanometer) IR filter. This allows the maximum amount of IR light through to the sensor while cutting out most visible light. The beauty of having an internal IR filter fitted is that you can use all your usual lenses and expose for an image in just the same way as you do normally. The downside is that, once fitted, the camera will ONLY shoot IR images.
The key to an interesting IR image is contrasting surfaces that do and don’t reflect lots of IR. Take a look at this image beloe, shot in the Faroe Islands. That’s not snow on the roof, it’s grass! But the sides of the buildings look normal because they don’t reflect IR light.
You'll also notice some quite obvious lens flare. In this example I believe it adds, rather than detracts from the overall image, but cameras that have been converted to IR are more susceptible to flare, so you will need to be extra careful if you want to avoid it.
When you shoot an IR picture (whether you shoot RAW or JPEG), it will initially be red in colour. All the normal detail will be there but it’ll look like you’ve just come back from a day trip to Mars. Don’t panic. This just needs converting to black & white. The simplest way for a JPEG image is simply to convert your file to mono via Image>Mode>Grayscale and then ‘zing’ up the flatness with Levels. But if you have a preferred way of converting to black & white, use it…
You can add colour back into your image. It won’t be a true colour but it gives the scene an interesting twist. The simplest way of doing this in Photoshop is to go to Image>Auto Color. Now we can swap the colours so go to Image>Adjustments>Channel Mixer and with the Red channel selected enter 0 next to the red slider and +100 next to the blue. Now select the blue channel, entering +100 next to the red and 0 next to the blue. Click OK.
With an IR converted camera and all your lenses at your disposal, the only limit to what you shoot is your imagination. I prefer the cleaner look of mono infrared to the strained ‘swapped’ colour appearance but both create a weird, slightly alien sense to images.
If you are shooting IR images why not add them to the Photo answers gallery so we can see what you are shooting. Make sure you tag your images ‘infrared’ and ‘IR’ so when people search for them yours will show up.