Digital Infrared

I've been a fan of infrared photography for a long time and knew it was possible to do it with digital cameras. But infrared with digital still had the same limitations as film in that it required long exposures due to the filter required, focus was a bit of guesswork because of infrared's different wave length, and results were inconsistant. Then I learned that you can have a digital camera converted to shoot infrared AND use it like a normal camera: no long exposures, autofocus, in camera metering (sort of). There is a company in Washington, LifePixel, that will convert your digital camera (either point and shoot or DSLR) to shoot infrared. It cost $350 to convert my Nikon D70.

The sensor in a digital camera is very sensitive to infrared light, so much so that manufacutrers install a filter over the sensor to filter IR out. LifePixel, in cleanroom conditions, will replace the "hot mirror" filter with an IR filter. And will calibrate your DSLR to any lens you send along. The results are quite stunning!



But even better is there is some color in these images. Of course its not accurate, but there is color that can be exploited. Here's a sample:



In this image I was able to color the sky blue in Photoshop by following a tutorial no the LifePixel website for Channel Mixing, then making a mask of the sky and using color balance to enhance the color that was there. This is one application, another is to use the colors as they exis to give a different feel to the image.



There is a lot I've learned in the two weeks I've had this. I'll be talking about what I've learned in future posts.