The following is my Infrared Process. It is by no means the only way to achieve this effect but it is the way I do it. You can view my Infrared Gallery Here: http://www.enslavedlight.com/myphotography/ Part 1 will cover what you need to know and how to take the images and part 2 will focus on what to do with them once you have them.


What is Infrared Photography?

Well it is the same as normal photography, except we are focusing on the near-infrared spectrum of light (700nm - 900nm) instead of visible light. It is not to be confused with IR thermal imaging or Thermography which is the measure of radiation in the far-infrared range (900nm - 14000nm).

What will I need?

1. IR filter
There are lots of IR filters to choose from but there are two that seem to be widely used. The Tiffen 87 and Hoya R72, the tiffen is a much darker filter and doesn't allow as much colour so I recommend the HoyaR72.

2. Camera
You are going to need a camera that is sensitive to IR light, the more sensitive to IR the better. Newer cameras tend to be less suited for IR because their hot mirrors filter out IR better. Most of my early IR work was done with a unmodified D70, which worked very well. Now however I have a modified D70 with the hot mirror replaced to increase the IR sensitivity. Manual settings are also going to be very handy. The test below shows diffrent sensitivitys although in my real world tests the D200 has proven to be less sensitive then the D70s, but as you can see they should both work.

3. Tripod
Because most cameras are not very sensitive to IR light you are going to have some very long shutter times making a good tripod a must.

1. Set camera to manual mode, and raw data.


2. Find a nice bright patch of grass, and custom white balance on it with filter. Custom White balance is important here is what you get with and without a manual white balance. If you shoot raw which you should this is less important because you can change it later. Straight from the camera without white balance. Very Red and hard to work with. You can use these unbalanced images but they wont work as well for this process.



Straight from the camera with a custom white balance. As you can see a much better image from the get go. This is what you will need to do this process.



3. Set the camera up and compose, and focus with the filter off.


4. Turn focus to manual, (To stop it from hunting around with the filter)


5. Put the filter on and check exposure, adjust the shutter speed until you are over exposing the image by quite a bit. Take a few practice shots to get it so that it is nice and bright but not overexposed. Also your histogram wont be able to show you over exposed areas properly so your going to have to base it on the lcd preview most of the time. So make sure you know your camera very well.


6. Take the photo, and repeat steps 3-5 till you have lots of pictures.