Infrared Images

….a few got chopped off, almost worked! 😉 Here’s the rest of that thread:

imacgirl – 06:57am Dec 4, 2003 Pacific (#97 of 101) Edited: 04-Dec-2003 at 07:03am PST

Leen,
Thanks, great link! Definitely worth bookmarking, very informative. I just tested my Minolta Dimage S414 and the light from the remote is white, no infrared blocking filter in front of the chip! Now I have to locate two frames of developed unexposed slide film, although it may be easier to get a Wratten 87 C IR filter. My camera has no way to attach filters, also need an adaptor if they make one. My wish list is forever growing!
Does anyone know if the IR appearance can be reproduced in Elements? I could then use it on any of my images and it would be a whole lot cheaper.
Barb
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———————————————————— ———— RobertHJones – 07:59am Dec 4, 2003 Pacific (#98 of 101)

Hi Barb,

Here’s another infrared link for you:
<http://www.cliffshade.com/dpfwiw/ir.htm#testing>
Has lots of good information and well worth the read.

The IR response of digital cameras varies greatly. Even passing the "remote control test", the 87 and especially 87c may not work well with many. The 89b has more transmission and may work better with the lower sensitivity cameras.

I bought my 89b from Harrison Optical, they manufacture their own filters and are quite inexpensive. You can get a quote at I
don’t know about a filter mount for your camera. That will be a problem.

Does anyone know if the IR appearance can be reproduced in Elements? I could then use it on any of my images and it would be a whole lot cheaper.

You can simulate some aspects, I know of a link that describes one technique. Let me look around and see if I can find it again.

Bob

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———————————————————— ———— imacgirl – 08:10am Dec 4, 2003 Pacific (#99 of 101) Edited: 04-Dec-2003 at 08:11am PST

Bob,
Thanks, I’m really glad I asked about this, these links are most helpful and so is all your information. I’d appreciate the Elements link, very kind of you to look for it!
Edit: Sorry Joe, for taking over your topic with IR…we’ll get back to tripods soon! Barb
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———————————————————— ———— RobertHJones – 08:25am Dec 4, 2003 Pacific (#100 of 101)

Barb,

Here’s a link on simulating the infrared look in Photoshop. <http://www.apogeephoto.com/may2003/mfulks52003.shtml>

This uses the color mixer control which isn’t surfaced in Elements. But, it is hidden in Elements and the free Hidden Power tools package contains a tool to get to it. So, you can do it in Elements.

The tutorial does well in simulating the lightened color of green plants but doesn’t deal with the darkened sky effect. If you play around with this, you may want to keep this in mind and possibly reduce the blue a little more and/or mask the sky area to increase the contrast of it while leaving the rest of the image alone.

Infrared also cuts through haze rather well and this will be harder to simulate. You can get somewhat of a simulation by increasing local contrast by using the unsharp mask filter: lower the amount setting to something like 50-60 or so and set the radius high, say 25-30 or so and play with it until you get something that looks good.

Bob

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———————————————————— ———— Leen Koper – 08:39am Dec 4, 2003 Pacific (#101 of 101)

Wouldnot it be nice to start a new topic about IR images? This might be useful for later reference.
Leen
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101 messages. Displaying 1 through 101.
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Hi,

How can you tell if your camera is sensitive, or will handle an IR filter correctly? I have a Panasonic FZ-10.

Thank you from a newbie,

Michelle

Michelle,

Leen posted this message earlier and this link tells you how:

Barbaram, a nice link to IR photography the cheap way:
<http://www.xs4all.nl/~wiskerke/artikelen/infraroodeng.html> Although this website is mainly in Dutch, this is in english too. There are many nice topics and links on this site; worth bookmarking.
Leen

Barb

Not sure if you had this one yet, but on the subject of IR this FAQ is one of the best on the web.

<http://www.cocam.co.uk/CoCamWS/Infrared/INFRARED.HTM>

Geared mainly to film, but has some digital info and filter factors.

Rich

Okay, thank you. I am off to check this links out…

Rich, another excellent link, thanks!

Barb

What fun! I didn’t realize that my new Coolpix 4300 is capable of infrared pictures. My old Coolpix 990 didn’t seem to be, or at least not very much.
The TV remote trick is neat.
I am having fun looking thru all your informative links too. Another neat thing to learn to do with my new camera.
Now I just have to get a hunk of developed unexposed slide film, and that is easy to do.

If I keep this up, I will never never get our poor kitchen painted.

Jane

This is probably the mother of all IR and panorama links:

<http://www.a1.nl/phomepag/markerink/mainpage.htm>

If you want to follow all his links on this site, Merry Christmasses and a Happy New Years. See you again in 2005!

😉

Leen

Leen,

2005 may be a slight under estimate…WOW! 😉

Barb

p.s. I decided to try out my real name here for a change, a long story as to why I never used it in the past. The only disadvantage is ALL the topics look unread, slow loading the ones at 100+ posts. 😉

Barb and all,

You might want to check out this gallery of Don Ellis’s infrared images. These were all done with a Canon G1.

<http://www.kleptography.com> Scroll toward middle of page and on down.

Mark,

All of his images are absolutely stunning, thanks, another terrific link!

Barb

Here’s a link with images from a digital Rebel with an IR filter: <http://www.pbase.com/littleflurry/canon_dig_rebel_infrared>

I think they’re pretty cool.

CR

Just a word about infrared.

While there may be filtering or means of creating an infrared effect (some of these I have seen as plugins are really pretty mediocre), this would be a complicated process. Though I have a section on doing this in my new book, the effect only mimicks the real outcome. The reason for this is IR is outside of the spectra of visible light. In normal circumstances and in an sRGB color space, IR will not be recorded/retained (this is not to say some sensors do not have sensitivity to the IR spectra — that is two separate issues). If IR light is not specifically recorded, you will not take visible light and make an accurate adjustment to mimick IR. It would really require rebuilding the effect.

That said, the process would need to take many factors into account to achive an effect, such as image brightness and filtering per color (IR photography in B&W filters out blues and greens depending on color, you will find that starting with the red channel is a good jumping off point). The best results may be had by forcing shifts in greens toward red so that you get whitened foliage…but that even by example only addresses a portion of the complexity which is the infrared spectrum and how it has traditionally affected film.

The Rebel with IR filter seems a more realistic way to produce these effects…and then there is always using IR film in an analog camera.

Sometimes there really is no substitution. A similar problem occurs in underwater photography where everything at any significant depth turns blue — as other wavelengths peter out. You can only record the light that is there with equipment and media that can actually handle the information.

Hope that helps!

Richard Lynch

Hi Richard, The underwater problem; I have many many slides taken before underwater flash worked well, so many of my pictures, the deeper I went, are very blue. I took some so deep that all of the yellow, orange and red is absent.
But with PSE, I have been able to reconstruct some of them so that they do look pretty good, far better than I thought. I am only a beginner, but have been astonished at what PSE can do!
Thank you for explaining this to us/me, the more I learn about this wonderful program and what it can do, amazes me.
PS I have your book and am slowly learning it, and am looking forward to your new one. Jane