Dabbling with infrared.

[greengiant]

Managed to get hold of a cheap Kood IR filter from the bay, so I've had a little play with it on my K100D with 18-55mm kit lens:

 

[greengiant]

Whats infrared?

What do you mean by whats infrared?

 

[greengiant]

Sorry Greengiant & Scuzi. Yes of course I have.

At the moment I am taking apart a 350D replacing the sensor hot filter with a custom IR one as we speak.

My comment was pure Johnny Sarcasm because I am excited

Your image is nice. Can I ask what shutter, ISO etc details were used as I am not familiar with the camera you used?

From the image exif:

Camera Make: PENTAX Corporation

Camera Model: PENTAX K100D

Image Date: 2007:07:09 12:16:04

Flash Used: No

Focal Length: 18.0mm (35mm equivalent: 27mm)

Exposure Time: 1.000 s

Aperture: f/11.0

ISO equiv: 200


and an el-cheapo Kood IR72 filter.


Brave man taking apart a DSLR!

 

[greengiant]

So the Pentax takes bloody good IR shots if those are the settings.

I compliment you and encourage you to do more!

Yes Im very brave or very stupid. I guess in a few hours I will know the answer to that!

Just taking the sensor out now!! :O

From what I can gather the K10D is less sensitive to IR. It is a cheapo IR filter I have bought, but it seems to work OK with the kit lens.

I'm definitely going to dabble with IR more.

cheers

--
Brian

 

[greengiant]

Ok, photography noob here... Does an IR filter let thru only the IR, or block the IR?

I've been able to "see" infrared from my TV remote before on my cameraphone, as it has a cheap lens with no IR filter... but I thought all good cameras already have IR filter on the lens?

Anyway, cool looking shot.

The lens mounted IR filter is really a filter which blocks out visible light. Makes it hard to see through the viewfinder on an slr, so you need to compose then fit the filter.

 

[greengiant]

Can I ask, did you do any post-processing to the image and did you apply a custom white balance? I ask because the IR filter I ordered should be arriving tomorrow and I've only ever shot IR on modded webcams and cheapo digicams

Custom white balance (photographed a patch of grass with the filter on)
Then in GIMP, auto levels, swap red + blue channels in the channel mixer.

Pics straight from the cam tend to look like this:

--
Brian

 

[greengiant]

Greengiant I hope you don't mind but I couldn't resist a tinker with your glorious shot, looks good in B&W it does

Looks good. The church I had still to post pro. Could you give an idea of what steps you did to get the image above?

cheers

 

[greengiant]

Also had a quick play with yours.
I hope no one is offended by my taking on some further processing its just I work a lot with Infrared and personally feel I know how to bring out the best in an image. This is a very beautiful Image greengiant.

Looks much better!

PPing isn't my strong point, and IR photography needs a lot of PP done!

However I'm hoping to get some more shots done this weekend.

regards

--
Brian

 

[greengiant]

I basically used the workflow as described by Panzerbjorn:

'Auto levels, contrast and colour

Channel mixer: select Red from the drop down and change the Red to 0 and the Blue to 100 then select Blue from the drop down and change Red to 100 and Blue to 0

Hue/Saturation: Select Master from the drop down and change the Hue to 40

Curves: Play around with this but I settled for Input 185 Output 200

Auto levels, contrast and colour again.

Noise reduction and USM and you're done'

I also used this B&W action. Then some burning and dodging to darken the sky and the darker parts of the church and lighten the foliage. Tweaked with curves and finally some unsharp mask- a bit too much perhaps... there is a lot of potential in your shot and someone with more time and skill than me could make it int a stunning shot

Thanks for that. I'll give that a try on the original image!