Posted: 7/28/2012 6:19:47 PM EDT
Took these in the Portsmouth/Rye NH today. Used my IR-only D70s that I converted myself, handheld with my 18-200 VR. Replaced the hot mirror with some RG715 Schott glass I bought on ebay for about 15 bucks.You can see a few dust specs on the sensor, I need to take the sensor out and clean it again. I didn't make any correction to the AF, so I shot most of these in f/8 or f/10. It was overcast all day, so I didn't get any cool colors from the sky. The camera on the tripod is my D5100 –– I was trying out my new ND400, but I didn't set up in the right location to get the effect I wanted. I had my 10-20mm on that too so it was too wide of an angle, I'm going to try again with a 35mm or something next time.
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Very cool. A couple of questions:
Is the sepia color natural or done in post? I'm assuming you have a background in camera assembly/repair. Is this possible for someone with no experience in that field but with mechanical aptitude to do it themself? Discuss the process. What all is envolved? Assuming it wont affect proprietary techniques or anything. Thanks for sharing. I have an old 10d calling my name for this technique. |
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All IR photography takes a ton of post processing. When I get home, I'll post some images as they look right off the camera. They come off the camera very red. I shoot exclusively in RAW. You can set a custom white balance to help (lowest temperature possible), but they still need a custom WB profile in DNG Profile Manager to go even lower in temperature in Lightroom or Photoshop. Some pictures look better when the red and blue channels are flipped in Photoshop. I did this to one of the harbor images –– you can see that one boat is red in one shot and blue in another. I also jack the contrast up a bunch. There are several ways to get to a similar result.
Basically, in front of the camera's sensor is a glass filter. The standard one allows visible light through, while blocking UV/IR to make normal looking photos. I just removed that filter, and replaced it with a piece of RG715 glass (allows IR, blocks UV/visible). Its the same glass used in Wratten 87 screw-on filters. Lifepixel is one of the biggest IR-conversion companies out there –– they have disassembly and how-to guides on their site (lifepixel.com, I believe) Also google a site called "ifixit", they have disassembly guides as well. One thing I would recommend is just getting the glass off of ebay. I paid 15$ for the glass and 12$ for a glass cutting wheel. Lifepixel charges about 200$ for a custom filter. I'm sure theirs is more accurate than mine, but this works for what I do with it. I only paid like $160 for the D70s on ebay, so I couldn't justify spending more than that on a 1" x 1" piece of glass. Disassembly of the D70 is a breeze. I'm an EE by trade, so I'm naturally comfortable hacking/slashing on electronics, but its a really straight forward process for anyone. I actually took it apart after I posted these to re-clean the sensor, and it took 15min total. Check out the how-to guides on Lifepixel and see if it seems doable for you.I have not recalibrated the focus on mine yet. The AF light path and sensor path are unique on a DSLR, so doing this conversion doesn't affect the camera's metering and AF. Since visible light and IR focus at different distances (and since in my case the new filter is 1mm thick, where as the original one is 1.33mm thick) a nice crisp picture in the viewfinder doesn't necessarily mean a sharp image on the sensor. I've only done landscape stuff with it so far though so it hasn't been an issue. Many older lenses will have a red scale next to the normal focus scale –– this is for IR. IR focuses at a shorter distance than visible. ETA: this is what it looks like coming off the camera, with the in-camera white balance preset to green grass. 
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Very cool ! It's been about 35 years since I played around with IR film. It was always interesting.
I'll have to look around and see if I still have the film- I think some of it was B & W, and am certain I shot color also- ? Ektachrome IR ? I don't recall exactly, but I think it was Eastman Kodak. 
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