First Infra Red Attempts

[PKMax]

ok, I know I'm new here and all, but glanced at the first section and thought oooh, I've only just been playing with IR filters.. and it was a lot of fun.

here were my poor first attempts lol









and Taking pics of people with an IR filter on is not easy lol, for a start you can't see them through the lens to focus lol.

I've really been enjoying taking IR photos though, and it seems to be dominating my photo style at the moment due to being the "new toy" heh.

[Marko]

I LOVE LOVE LOVE infrared and have been regularly reading up on digital infrared. I used to do A LOT of infrared (with film) a few years back.

I like these shots. Can you describe your technique? Are these straight out of the camera or they also post-processed somewhat?

many thanks!
Marko

[PKMax]

thanks for the comments I'm a big fan of IR now heh, I always wanted to try it, but missed the whole IR film thing.

The photos are taken on a non-converted D50, apparently you can do a change to the sensor, or a filter in front of the sensor to make your D50 shoot in IR without the need for a filter. So these photos come back onto the computer being all shades of Red, very very red, you can also see them in red on the viewfinder, which apparently you can play with the white balance by basing it on a patch of grass with the filter on too, or something like that, and they look a bit more "normal" lol.. anyways.. what did I do to them..

So, Mine are taken on a standard D50 with Cokin IR filter strapped to the front (I think i'll get one of the Hoya ones though, the Cokin filters tend get flare bouncing off the inside of the filter and back onto the lens, so you have to cover it over to prevent that)

The Black and White Photos are "out of the camera" but converted to Black and White with some quick Level adjustments to "pop" the contrast a bit.

The False Colour IR pics require a little more tweeking in photoshop, but not much.. the procedure is along the lines of:
Choose Auto Levels (I tend to do these as layers, because I might turn some off afterwards "to taste")

then choose adjust levels, and pick the White balance pen thingy.. then click on something in the photo you know to be white (like clouds) this will alter the colours a bit more.

then Channel mixer, and choose output channel Red
Adjust Red to 0% and Blue to 100%
Then select Blue and change Blue to 0% and Red to 100%

I then play with Hue until the sky looks like the colour I want.
then tinker curves etc till I like it

If that's too hard to follow, I could knock up a quick guide on it, using my Pics as an example.

I've tried a few other ways too, like inverting the picture after autolevels etc..

also, in addition to that, the chances of the above working seems to depend on the time of the day the photo is taken, in the morning you get a very red picture, and doing the above conversion doesn't give you much range of colour, you tend to get a very blue photo all over, so I tend to convert those to black and white. my best IR False Colour pics were taken in the afternoon to evening kinda times

and if you intend to do IR then you'll be needing a tripod in most cases, I managed to get a few pics of people that were taken at about 1/60 ish but you need it to be really bright. most of my pics where taken over several seconds, some of them getting up to about 30 seconds due to lack of light (well IR light lol)

Have fun though and you'll get a very big increase in photos you bin attempting this too heh, mainly due to not being able to see "through the lens" etc, without the filter on.. so you have to keep taking it off to frame and focus, then put it on and take the pic.

Quick note on focussing though, you can, if it's bright enough, focus through the IR filter, but.. it gets a bit tricked sometimes due to IR light being on a different frequency or something, so they don't appear as crisp as you'd expect.

[Marko]

Thanks so much for all the GREAT info PKMax. I've been considering modifying my camera for a few months now...and eventually I'll probably do it.

If that's too hard to follow, I could knock up a quick guide on it, using my Pics as an example.

It's not too hard for me but i think others would TRULY appreciate your offer. For ease if you wanted to post it in this thread that would be so amazing.

Thx again! - Marko

[PKMax]

I've just knocked up a quick Vid showing the buttons I press, it's a very quick example of what you can do to convert an IR picture, by no means will your photo be finished in the 1 minute that it took for me to demo this lol, you'll have to tinker and adjust until you get it how you want it I sometimes don't do all stages, I sometimes alter each stage, you kinda get a feel for the image as you start playing with it.

and I'm not talking on it lol.. not quite ready for the world to hear my voice heh.

I have 2 Downloads for the vid..

the Small one - Low Quality - Here

the Larger one - Higher Quality - Here

[Marko]

PK - I'm having trouble with both files.
Can anyone else open them?

[PKMax]

they are encoded with an XVid codec, so you may need to get the right codec. I'll put them up on youtube for view, I made the AVI downloadable directly because it's the way to get the best quality, youtube sometimes messes them up.

Here's a YouTube link, but it's not very clear.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qfckdFEXpzY