erm, HELP!!!! (IR photography)

magicmonkey

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Just got myself the Hoya IR filter (R72) and took a couple of shots in full sunshine, here are the results:

normal_IMG_8480.jpg


I'm using a 350D and the shot was taken at f22 30s in very bright sunshine, to start with everything is red rather than the lovely whiltes most people seem to get and secondly I was under the impression that you should be able to get a shot in around 2-4 seconds. The one I did at f3.5 30s was a touch overblown but not much, you could still make out plenty of detail.

So, does anyone have any handy hints for starting off in this somewhat strange venture?
 
well, first of all: you have to set your whitebalance to custom. But before you do that, you have to take a picture of grass (only grass, nothing else in the picture but grass) with your filter on the lens and set that to be your custom whitebalance. That should make the picture look more IR. I mostly shoot at f8 and take a 3-4 seconds per photo.
Also, play in Photoshop. Go to "levels" and drag the little arrows to the point where the data starts. That helps to get more contrast and stuff in the picture
And you can always google it, there is alot of info about digital IR on the net.
For example: http://www.lifepixel.com/digital-infrared/instructions.html
And last but not least, you can find an action for photoshop HERE I always play with the levels before i start that action, but it looks great.
I dont know what lens you are using, but my kitlens (18-55) had a huge hotspot whenever the exposure was to long. Im using the 50mm 1.8now and it works groovy.
Hope this all helped a bit, good luck with everything
 
well, been out and tried it, I need to play around a lot more but it's looking like a good start, thanks again for the help :)
 
You don't have to custom white balance if you shoot raw. You can just click white balance on a leaf in your raw software.
 
Digital Matt said:
You don't have to custom white balance if you shoot raw. You can just click white balance on a leaf in your raw software.

I was wondering about that but the custom white balance has affected the RAW images as well which I thought was a bit wierd, either that or my eyes have gone a bit funny with all the sunshine we've been having recently...
 
doenoe said:
your welcome
post some pics, im curious :)

Will do, I need to play around with them a bit when I get home though so I'll put some up tonight. Don't expect masterpeices though!
 
Cool, now take that image into photoshop, and duplicate the background layer. Then invert it (ctrl+i), and set its blend mode to "color".
 
Doh!! I'm at worfk now and I'm trying to think of a way to bunk off early and play with this! I'll post the update this evening...
 
here you go, interesting change this makes, I think I'll start having to decide between the 2 versions for each shot I take...

normal_IMG_8503_edit.jpg

Obviously the shot is pretty rubbish but the process has developed a lot with your help, thanks ever so much guys, I'm off to try some more :hail:
 
well, back to the drawing board then! I probably wasn't paying enough attention as it was nice and sunny yesterday so I wanted to get out and shoot rather than sitting at the PC...
 
all siorted, came out just like yours. God knows what I did last night then!! Thanks for the help...
 

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