Digital Infrared Photography - Film Fumbling In The Dark Foiled!
May 11th, 2008 by Photographer
Digital infrared photography requires some homework to lead you to the perfect camera equipped for this purpose.
It is quite feasible to use digital imaging to simulate the look of an image shot on infrared-sensitive film. However, this is no match for real digital infrared photography, since you’ll be working with an image that was taken in the visible spectrum!
True digital infrared photography can even resolve one or two of the problems associated with traditional infrared film photography.
One of them is that loading the film had to be done in the dark, to avoid any stray infrared contamination. This is often impractical in the field.
Straightforward digital infrared photography can only be accomplished with older types of digital cameras, which were built without an infrared cut-off filter over the imaging sensor.
Infrared sensitivity is inherent in all digital cameras, due to the nature of the imaging sensors which they use to capture light.
This sensitivity can cause problems with their visible light images, and therefore a hot mirror filter is built over the sensor. This in turn makes it difficult to capture infrared light with such a standard camera.
To determine if your digital camera can detect infrared, you should place an infrared filter over the lens. Next take a source of infrared, such as your DVD or TV remote control, and point it toward the camera.
If you can see the light through your viewfinder or on your LED screen, your camera is infrared ready!
An older digital camera such as the Konica-Minolta D’image 7, can be used for digital infrared photography after adding a 49mm IR filter, and a cable release.
However, some cameras pass enough infrared light only through very long - and fairly impractical - exposures of between 2 and 30 seconds. This is done through infrared longpass filters over the lens.
For some photographers it makes sense to convert a suitable digital camera for digital infrared photography.
An example of a camera which can be effectively converted for digital infrared photography, is the Nikon D70. In this case the filter can be installed over the imaging sensor instead of over the lens, which makes it possible for the image to be seen clearly in the viewfinder for easy composition.
The ideal conditions for digital infrared photography present themselves on a bright day with blue sky and white cumulus clouds. The blue sky will turn dark and accentuate the white clouds. Green foliage are also useful, as the chlorophyll reflects infrared radiation, and therefore glows light gray.
Just remember that it makes sense to leave any camera conversions to professionals, to ensure it is done in a dust free situation. This is especially important if the camera you want to use for digital infrared photography is still covered by a warranty!
For more information visit Best-Digital-Photography.com
Rika Susan of Article-Alert.com researches, writes, and publishes full-time on the Web. Copyright of this article: 2006 Rika Susan. This article may be reprinted if the resource box and hyperlinks are left intact.
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