Today’s Post by Joe Farace
Here’s something to think about when contemplating taking up infrared photography: When capturing IR images everything you know about light is wrong.
That’s because exposure meters are not sensitive to infrared light (or even some LED lights but that’s a subject for another day.) So you might think that it can be tricky to calculate exact exposures when shooting IR but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. Although your DSLR or mirrorless camera’s LCD screen can provide instant feedback, out-of-the-box these screens or EVF’s not always accurate and not predictably in the same direction—over or underexposure wise. And these difference can vary from camera-to-camera. I found my Canon DSLRs to be too bright at the standard screen brightness level but it can also be true when viewing images from different infrared conversions or when using the kind of IR filters that can be used on the camera’s lens.
You can’t trust your eyes either. Two subjects that appear equally bright under normal (visible) light might reflect infrared radiation at different rates and exhibit different brightness in your final image. And as I’ve discovered, much to my chagrin, the time of day can have a dramatic affect on the results too. So what’s a poor hippo to do? (as it says on my favorite coffee mug)…
Shoot RAW. Eliminating all of the hoo-haw of how RAW gives you a higher quality image file to start with, I usually recommend that you shoot RAW+JPEG with the camera set in monochrome mode, if only for that JPEG file to give you a rough preview of what the RAW file might reveal after processing.Cameras with twin card slots can assign RAW to one slot and JPEGs to the other so you just deal with the RAW files on that one card.
It the extra storage space bothers you can always toss the JPEG files later or do like I do and save all of the RAW+JPEG files onto a backup DVD that I keep in the archives in my workroom. There’s more to the whole RAW vs JPEG concept and those additional thoughts can be found in a post on my Car Photography blog, if you have time, please check it out.
Shoot in Av mode picking a fairly small aperture to minimize any focusing problems, because most lenses can’t focus infrared wavelengths on the same plane as visible light. And I understand that diffraction can raise its ugly head at smaller apertures. The infrared focusing mark that used to be part of every manual lenses back in the film days disappeared with the advent of AF. (That’s the red dot to the right of the orange focus line of my Canon FD 50mm f/3.5 macro lens at left.) Interestingly, the recent spate of new manual focus lens that have become popular, including those from Leica, lack a IR focusing mark. Is it so hard to do, lens makers?
Bracket: Most DSLRs and mirrorless cameras have an auto bracketing function that lets you make a series of shots at exposures over and under from what’s considered “normal.” If your camera doesn’t have a bracketing function you can always use the Exposure Compensation feature to adjust exposures up or down in one-half or one-third stops. I use this feature a lot when shooting IR. If all else fails and you’re still not happy with the results shoot in Manual mode.
How I made this shot: The above image was captured at McCabe Meadows park near Parker, CO using a Panasonic Lumix G5 that was converted to IR capture by Life Pixel using their Standard IR filter (720nm) with a Lumix G Vario 12-32mm f/3.5-5.6 lens at 12mm. The Av exposure for the RAW file was 1/320 sec at f/11 and ISO 400. Image file was opened in Photoshop then processed in Silver Efex.
I’ve found that Life Pixel does a great job with IR conversions and they’ve done most of the conversions for some of my Canon DSLRs and all of my Panasonic Lumix G-series cameras. This is not a paid or sponsored endorsement, just my experience.
My book, The Complete Guide to Digital Infrared Photography is available from Amazon for $41.99 with used copies starting around $17.00 as I write this. Creative Digital Monochrome Effects has a chapter on IR photography and is available from Amazon for $19.40 with used copies starting around two bucks