Infrared Photography with Digital Unmodified Camera

Jun 072011
 

You don’t need to have your DSLR modified to produce “real” infrared images.  But it helps.

I began infrared with Kodak HIE film (no longer made) and a Leica M3 rangefinder.  I used that for a very long time, and I have to admit, it was my favorite in terms of results, but using it could be a real pain because of how sensitive that film was to light.  Maybe it was just me, but I found that I needed to load and remove the film in a film changing bag.  Then I read about how you could take a digital camera and have it modified to capture infrared images.

Then I had an early digital Rebel modified for me, which I liked a lot.  The big thing with a modified infrared digital dslr is that you can really see what you’re doing and you get a nice bright image to work with.  You don’t need any special filters.

But if you don’t have the money, or don’t want to get your DSLR modified, it is quite possible to do infrared with an unmodified digital camera.  You’ll need to choose the infrared filter of your choice.

In a nutshell you can choose from the following infrared filters:

Hoya R72 Filter (Wratten 89b, B+W 092 equivalent)

The Hoya R72 was my personal favorite.  It lets in some visible light and is probably going to need an adjustment of six or more stops depending on the subject and the lighting.  If you were shooting foliage (which emits infrared light) and the normal exposure for a sunlit day was f8 and 1/1000th of a second shutter speed, you’d need to open up to about f2.0 and 1/60th (or some combination that gave you about 8 more stops of light).  But with a digital camera it’s so easy (compared to film) because you’ll be able to immediately check the exposure on the back of the camera.

And then there’s the let’s cut out all visible light filters.

The Wratten 87 and 87c Filters

Assuming that you are using a DSLR, both filters are tricky to use because once they are on the lens, you really can’t see much since you are looking directly through the lens.

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 Using Your Camera ,  1 Response »

More Digital Camera Confessions

Apr 242011
 
CANON EOS DIGITAL REBEL

Adobe Lightroom can easily show you a list of what digital cameras you’ve used, and with what lenses, and how many shots you took with each. When you are in the Library Module, on the left hand column, select All Photographs. While in the “tile mode” click on the Metadata link at the top. You can then choose what you want to see. I thought this was an interesting way to see what cameras I had shot the most with, and with what lenses.

In my case, the winner, by a large margin is the Canon EOS 40D. This may mean that I had that camera the longest. Or that I was doing the most shooting per day when I had that camera. One of the things that I can see is that not a single of my Powershot images made it into the print store. But I can also see that some of my most popular images were done with the first Digital Rebel. I actually flirted with digital with that camera. After using it for a while I returned it, or sold it. I don’t remember which. So many of my early images were disturbing because of blown highlights. But I did shoot RAW – and that saved me because later on, image processing software evolved to be able to deal, to some degree, with those early blown highlight issues.

That can be an embarrassing admission.  But, for better or worse, I’ve made some screenshots (you can see them all if you go into the gallery) which demonstrates a slightly wayward attitude towards digital cameras.  I should note that at the time of this writing I have the Canon T1i for regular shooting and the Canon XS which has been modified for infrared shots.  But along the way you will see that I have experimented with a few other cameras such as the Canon 5D (too slow in focusing for my taste); and the G9 (which I know a lot of people love, but apparently I didn’t).

The Adobe Lightroom catalog has about 50,000 images, both from scanned film, and from digital cameras.  I thought that first I’d post the screenshots and then see if there was any rhyme or reason to it.  You might try the same thing since at the very least it will tell you which digital camera you did the most shooting with, and that is likely to be the one you have the most keepers from.

Note: You will see some odd things, such as the NIKON or the CANON 5D II (these are files from students I’ve taught. As a general rule, they have more recent cameras then I do at the time of the lesson).

Okay — and here we go.

 Using Your Camera ,  2 Responses »

1. Lightroom and NIK Photography Software

Apr 102011
 
1. Lightroom and NIK Photography Software

An overview of how I prepare a RAW file with NIK Photo Processing Software. The basic concept is to try and preserve as much data as possible before going to the next steps which may involve HDR, or ColorEfex Pro or SilverEfex Pro. That will be in the second video. (There’s also a quick look at NIK DFine and the PreSharpener). Important to know is that there are two NIK Collections. You can buy individual [more]

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GorillaPod Tripod

Apr 102011
 
GorillaPod Tripod

I don’t know when it first happened, but somewhere along the line the harmless tripod became the despised, detested and disgusting to authorities.  It became worse after Sept. 11th.  The tripod was practically held responsible.  It was never legal to take a tripod on the NYC subways, but you could always get a permit.  And even if you didn’t have a permit, the police were lenient with you. In 1993 I was able to take [more]

 Using Your Camera ,  6 Responses »

3. HDR PHOTO TIPS

Apr 062011
 
3. HDR PHOTO TIPS

A Quick Recipe for HDR (One note, the image you’re looking at is a bit squeezed by the the blog layout.  So you can get a better idea, though still not anything close to showing the detail that’s in the shot, by click on the image.) The idea behind HDR is that by combining three or more digital images that have different exposures you can achieve a wider dynamic range than you can with a [more]

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