In the film world, you can buy special infrared sensitive film and then you buy a special filter to cover the lens of the camera that won't let visible light through. Then the only light exposing the film is infrared and you can get some really interesting landscape photos that look kind of dreamy or surreal. Trees, grass and plants go all white and this makes for very different photos. This is all monochrome or Black and White.
With Digital, you can have a camera modified that will let in the infrared light and then a filter blocks the visible light. The added benefit with Digital, is that you can get Color images from the IR light. These make for some very cool looking photos.
I will soon be posting some photos from a cheap home made IR camera that only does black and white and then some color photos from an IR camera that I will be getting soon.
First, here's a camera that I bought last year that is really intended to be a night vision camera. It has Infrared lights on it and a mode to capture infrared photos. So, essentially, you can see in the dark with it, but the lights don't light up very far and the images are pretty boring. It can do normal photos, but every camera I have is better quality for normal photos than what I can do with this thing. However, since it does photograph infrared, I figured I could some how convert it to be able to shoot infrared landscapes. With a little research, I found that you can use exposed, developed negative as a home made filter that will block normal visible light, but allow infrared light to pass. This is how infrared typically works when doing landscapes and such. Anyway, I found some old negatives and cut a few pieces out, and then taped them over the tiny lens on this camera. Here's a look at the camera in all it's glory! ;)
You can just imagine the looks I might get if people saw me using this to take photos of a beautiful landscape, especially mounted on a tripod. I have actually put it on a tripod. Anyway, the following is an example of what I have been able to produce with this camera.
I did consider having an old DSLR converted to IR, but didn't want to commit an SLR to that just yet, so I'm taking this in steps. After doing more research, I decided to go with a pre-converted point & shoot camera and settled on the following:
Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS19 14.1 MP Infrared camera
There were several factors to my decision, the biggest at this point for me was cost. Since I don't know how deep into this I'll go, I don't want to spend a ton of money and have something just sitting on the shelf or some drawer somewhere collecting dust and not getting much use. I don't think that will be the case, but just trying to watch the dollars at this point. I did not however, settle for something that I don't think will do the job either. This camera has a lot of nice features and appears to have a nice design. The lens is a Glass Leica Lens, (Leica is a somewhat expensive and well respective camera brand) so I figured that would be a plus of using a Digital Point and Shoot camera for IR photography, is that you can see what you will be getting by looking at the camera display when setting up your picture. After looking at the specs of this camera, and some of the sample IR photos on the site that carries it preconverted for IR, I decided at 14mp, I would be able to get nice sized prints worth of hanging on the wall or selling if I choose to do that.
The new camera should be arriving soon, so I'll be editing this post with some follow-up and new pics, both in IR Color and Monochrome.
If you are curious about the camera, IR photography or want to see what IR photos, both color and black and white look like, check out the site selling this camera at: http://www.kolarivision.com/index.html
For more pics and info and to read about my experience and see some new IR photos, check back soon!
One of early Color IR photos with the new camera...very happy so far!
