Today’s Post by Joe Farace
Now the world has gone to bed, Darkness won’t engulf my head, I can see by infrared,—Douglas Adams
In making photographs you have many options including color, monochrome as well as the kind of images that can only be captured by invisible light. The wavelengths of every color of light is measured in nanometers (one billionth of a millimeter) and light that has wavelengths between 700 and 900nm is considered to be infrared. Surprisingly, this band of infrared light is a thousand times wider than that of visible light, yet it’s totally invisible to our eyes.
Capturing Invisible Light
Being able to capture images using infrared light can transform what would normally appear to be the most mundane subject matter into a dramatic photograph. Scenes you might walk by and never think about shooting, take on a completely different and unique appearance when seen via infrared light. You can accomplish this by using filters or digital cameras that have been converted specifically for IR capture. These days it’s never been simpler to capture these kinds of images,
If you decide that you want to get serious about digital infrared photography I think you should seriously consider having a camera converted to IR-only operation. Many used DSLRs and mirrorless cameras are coming onto the market at affordable prices, which presents an opportunity to pick up an extra body that accepts all of the lenses in your current camera system but adds a camera body that’s dedicated to infrared photography, all without breaking the piggy bank.
How I Made this photograph: The image at right was made during a PhotoWalk I had with my pal Barry Staver in Denver’s Hudson Gardens. It was made using a 16-megapixel Panasonic Lumix G6 that was converted by Life Pixel using their Enhanced Infrared (665nm) filter. The lens was the Olympus M.17mm F2.8 lens (34mm equivalent.) You can read my thoughts about that particualr lens in this post. The exposure was 1/250 sec at f/16 and ISO 400. The RAW file was processed using some of the techniques covered in my post, How important is white balance in infrared photography? before applying an optional Photoshop action (IR Channel Swap w/ white foliage.) Alternatively, you can also use the relatively simple techniques described in my post How to Produce the Blue Sky Infrared Technique.
One of the most important lessons you will learn about shooting IR images is to forget everything that you know about the best time of day to capture images. To give foliage that infrared glow you should shoot at a time of day when there’s more sun on the scene rather than less. This puts your prime shooting times around mid-day! These are the worst times to make conventional images but are the “golden hours” for infrared. If you need a rule of thumb, here’s one of Farace’s Laws: The best time of day to shoot infrared is when it’s the worst time of day to shoot normal images.
I’ve found that Life Pixel does a great job with IR conversions and they’ve done most of the conversions for my Canon DSLRs and all of my Panasonic Lumix G-series cameras. This is not a paid or sponsored endorsement, just my experience.
Used copies of my book, The Complete Guide to Digital Infrared Photography are available from Amazon starting around nine bucks as I write this. My book Creative Digital Monochrome Effects has a chapter on IR photography and is available new from Amazon for $11.46 with used copies starting around six bucks as I write this.