Today’s Video by Joe Farace
People—reader, a guy at Home Depot, you know, people— often asked me about shooting infrared photography—both film and digital. So I’ve put together the first of two ten-minute or so video explainers that together might be called Getting Started in Infrared Photography. That was the original title of my book about infrared photography, so naturally the publisher had to change it to something that wasn’t necessarily descriptive of its contents. I liked how the book turned out any and new copies are available from Amazon for $41.99 with used copies starting around seventeen bucks as I write this.
Today is Part 1 of this video two-fer is available (below) or on my YouTube channel with Part 2 showing up on next Wednesday—March 24, 2022.
A note about the video production: But first, here are the links that I refer to in the video:
- Working with Wratten Filters and Infrared Photography
- How to Produce the Blue Sky Infrared Technique
Unlike the Cars & Coffee videos that are produced with Cliff Lawson, I am responsible for everything about these film and digital photography video from being the host, setting-up the gear, shooting the footage, knocking it down and editing it all together and finally posting on my YouTube channel.
Except for the last video, the camera I’ve been using for these YouTube videos was Canon’s EOS M6 Mark II with its EF-M 15-45mm f/3.5-6.3 IS STM kit lens. While I liked the idea of shooting a camera with an APS-C sized sensor, based on recent less than happy video experiences with this camera—it’s great for still photography— I’ve switched to a Panasonic Lumix G9. The sensor of the Lumix G9 is smaller that the M6 Mark II’s but the video quality somehow looks better to me, although this latest one is not without it’s Panasonic-related AF quirks. The lens used was an Olympus 25mm f/1.8 (50mm equivalent) with the camera perched upon my old, green Manfrotto tripod
I’m often asked how I shoot these videos; here’s the camera settings I used for this one, not that I am the guy to get any kind of video advice from:
- 1920×1080, 30P
- 420/8bit
- 20Mbps
Instead of the Deity V.Lav Lavalier Lapel Microphone used previously, audio was captured with a Rode VideoMic shotgun mic that was a gift from Barry Staver; it’s mounted on the G9’s hot shoe and powered by a 9V Duracell battery. Most of the lighting is provided by daylight coming from two large windows in my living room but for this and the previous video a NEO 2 LED Camera Light was added at camera left to brighten the shadows. The footage is edited using a seven year-old copy of iMovie on an old (in computer years) 27-inch 5K iMac and then uploaded to YouTube.
At the end of the video, I mention the address my post office box and if, like the kind person who sent me the roll of Agfa 50 color negative film, you would like to send me a roll of film to review or any other stuff that could be used for these posts and my videos you can mail it to: Joe Farace, PO BOX 2081, PARKER, CO 80134
What’s Next?: This Film Friday will be a look at the Lleica M6 I used during a solo photo walk. And if you would like tell me what you would like to see or if you have any questions about film or digital photography, please click CONTACT and let’s talk.