With the advent of digital cameras it is now possible to photograph infrared light. The latest digital cameras are sensitive to infrared light, so much so that manufacturers place a hot mirror filter in front of the image sensor to block infrared light from spoiling regular photographs.

By replacing this regular filter glass with an special infrared filter it is possible to photograph infrared images hand held at low ISO speeds and without the need of any lens-based infrared filters.

I decided to convert my Canon 30D to an Infrared-Camera (especially for weddings and nature photography) and asked my friend Marc Zahno for  helping me out. Let’s have a look how this conversion works:

So this is the sensor with the regular filter glass in front of it. In order to prevent the regular light to pass through you have to replace this glass by an Infrared one. This step is quite difficult and could become very harmful to the sensor if you don’t do it carefully. Your workspace must be dust-free and clean. The filter replacement was my job =)

That’s it =)

So what does the world look like in Infrared? Well, that depends. Some things reflect Infrared better than others, and some things even emit Infrared on their own. Living things are rich in Infrared, such as plants and leaves.

It can be very hard to anticipate what something will look like when rendered in IR. Green leaves typically become very white, and the sky becomes very dark. So does still water. People’s skin becomes an almost ghostly white, which can either be attractive or cadaverous, depending on the situation.

I’ll post some shots later this month! Stay tuned…

Social Bookmarking