Today’s Post by Joe Farace
And so on a particular Saturday morning, I headed to the Parker, Colorado Cars & Coffee carrying my Panasonic Lumix G5 that had been converted to Infrared by LifePixel and made the photographs you see here.The comnversion was done with their Standard IR filter (720nm) which is equivalent to a Hoya R72 Filter or a Kodak Wratten 89b filter.
It’s not that I never did this before but in the past I’ve photographed shot cars in IR at venues where there were lots of trees and grass before. (See next week’s #wheelswednesday post.) But this was different. I was shooting when the car show was scheduled, mostly in the morning and that’s not the best time for shooting infrared, which is mid-day but by then the show would be over.
How I made this shot: I photographed the hot rod with a Panasonic Lumix G5 that was converted to Infrared by LifePixel with Lumix 12-32mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens at 12mm. Exposure was 1/50 sec at f/11 and ISO 400. The RAW file was converted to monochrome with Silver Efex.
The shoot was not without some issues caused by the time of day when these shots were being made. These challenges were primarily due to flare from the Lumix 12-32mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens. Panasonic does not officially offer a hood for this lens, although the third-party one I bought on Amazon sorta kinda works.
The problem would be mitigated when shooting closer to noon with the sun directly above, allowing you capture better quality IR images as well as virtually eliminating the possibility of flare craeted by shooting with a wide-angle lens. Yes, I admit that using longer focal length lenses might have eliminated these problems too but based on my experience that’s not the best lens choice for Cars & Coffee events, unless you only want to capture details of the cars.
If I have any tips for shooting infrared at a Cars & Coffee event, it’s that I really liked the way silver cars photographed like the Nissan GTR at right, but other than that I suggest you give it a try and see what you discover. And as always, you can shoot infrared photography by having one of your old cameras that’s sitting around gathering dust converted to IR-only operation. Or maybe using filters.
How I made this shot: Made with a Panasonic Lumix G5 that was converted to Infrared by LifePixel with a Lumix 12-32mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens at 18mm. Exposure was 1/500 sec at f/11 and ISO 400. The RAW file was converted to monochrome with Silver Efex.
Life Pixel does a great job with IR conversions and they have 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.
My book, The Complete Guide to Digital Infrared Photography is available from Amazon for with new copies selling for $13.07 with used copies starting around eight bucks, as I write this. Creative Digital Monochrome Effects has a chapter on IR photography and is available from Amazon with new copies at $5.95 with used copies starting at four bucks, as I write this. There’s no Kindle version available for either book.