IR Converted -vs- Color Camera Samples

While I was taking pictures during the holidays, I managed to get a shot of this colorful rocking horse in both color with a Nikon D80 and with the IR converted Canon G9. It makes for an interesting comparison of the way that IR cameras see a color scene.

First, let's look at the scene in color:

Then the IR version of the same scene:

One of the big differences is the red lettering along the bottom gliders, which of course the IR camera sees as white. the shadows along the neck and legs are also much more distinct in the IR, showing the lines of the horse much better.

Next we have the color horse shot converted to black and white using a standard Photoshop conversion:

The B&W conversion has a greater fidelity as it does not lose the red details, but the IR shot has a distinct appearance that is more striking and whimsial. It is this whimsical, angelic quality that drew me to IR.

Graveyard in Infrared

On the way back from the waterfall, I stopped by an old roadside graveyard. I've developed a certain fascination on these roadside graveyards recently. I may wind up starting to collect shots from various ones in the region. No idea why, it's just this urge I have.

I didn't take any reference shots on those, so I only have the Infrared shots to show. All of these were with white balance set to the same forest green that's been doing so well for me when shooting outdoors with the Infrared camera. All of these shots, except where noted on the last one, are just as they came out of the camera, no tweaking.

What's making this a lot more fun than I expected is that the converted Canon G9 lets me take IR snapshots with the speed and ease of a conventional camera. Whereas each particular desired shot would have taken a half hour of trial and error with a conventional digital camera and an IR filter, these are basically point and shoot so I get to collect a large number of sample shots.

Here are a few basic shots that came out of about 10 minutes of running around the graveyard basically just snapping shots of everything in sight. In several cases, I manually dialed in some quick exposure bracketing just to be sure I got something usable. One of the challenges of shooting like this is that it's hard to know what's going to be really interesting until you get it back to your computer and see what the color scales really turned out like. The best part of digital is that essentially it's free, so take as many pictures as you feel like and sort them out afterwards. What turns out well is kind of surprising.

I started by just shooting several of the larger markers and trying to get some background and some sky into each shot to give it some range for the camera to play with for how it would attempt to treat the shots as color photographs.

After those, I started looking around for some shots to try and work in the rows of more conforming markers. But this is a very old graveyard and placement is somewhat irregular. Nevertheless, it made for some interesting shots:

Last, I took one shot and spent some time tweaking it, adjusted contrast, bit of a diffused blur and give it a slightly ghostly feel. Currently this is serving as my new desktop wallpaper.

Infrared Shots at Amicalola Falls

Well the weather was terrible Saturday, rainy and cold, so I stayed in. But I got out on Sunday to take some test shots. It was fairly cold out, 36 at home at noon time. I headed out Amicalola Falls to see about getting some shots to see what we could capture. By the time I'd reached the top of the falls on it's mount, it was down to well under 35. Even with gloves on and taking them off only long enough to adjust camera settings and various details, I rather quickly lost feeling in my fingers. We had very light snowflakes for most of the time I was there. After the first hour, I had nothing but constant pain below the knuckles of each hand so I packed up and headed back a bit before I'd have liked. But still, managed to get some shots that show what the camera can do.

This is a very simple shot with a Nikon D80 as a reference shot for the scene.

Then I set up the Infrared camera to see what it would show me. This is with a basic forrest green card used for the white balance.Here's the same one with the R/B channels switched.

I'm not sure if this was a typical example, but I seemed to have a much easier time getting an exposure balance with the IR shots than the normal shots. On the normal shots the lighting difference between the waterfall at the bottom of the frame and the sky at the top were too many stops apart to get any one shot that had detail in both. But with the IR converted Canon G9 it was fairly easy.

One thing I'll say abut the G9, the way it shows the picture on the back on the 3 inch screen is pretty nice. The display is adjusted to your expose settings. So as you dial in aperture or shutter speed, it adjusts the display to show you pretty much exactly what you are going to get. This has made it a lot more fun to go through the steps of learning what IR can do.

Conversely the G9 has it's downside. The noise level of the pictures is enough to have taken me back when I saw the first ones. I shot everything on this trip at the lowest ISO it supports (ISO 80) and it's much better. But even shooting at 400 I saw a lot more noise in the pictures that I'd like to ever see. Now granted, this might be part of the nature of converting to IR, I'm no expert. But even reviews in various places like DPReview said that it showed more noise than they were happy with. Being as my goal is almost entirely outdoor shots, I should be OK with sticking to the lower ISO. It's also worth noting that I have the Noise Reduction settings on the camera turned off. I can do noise reduction in Photoshop, so I'd like the originals to be as unaltered by the camera as possible.

On the way back from the falls, I stopped by a small roadside graveyard. I'll confess that over the past year I've developed a certain fascination with wanting to shoot pictures of the graveyards. I'll get those uploaded tomorrow.

The Infrared Camera is Here

So the Infrared Converted Canon G9 came in, and I've started testing around with it some.

First the reference pic of what the house looks like on normal film...

Here's a quick pic of our house from the new camera...

Here's the same shot with the red and blue channels reversed so that the sky winds up the more normal blue instead of red.
Tomorrow I plan to get out and take more shots with the new camera, and soon I'd like to do some that illustrate various white balance options and their effects.

The white balance on the IR shots above shot was set to a deep green from a color card I had prepared ahead of time. That's why the tree and bushes wind up being nearly white. It's winter and the grass is in hibernation so it's not green to begin with ;)

Picking a Camera for Infrared Conversion

First of all, it's worth asking why one would want to convert a digital camera to InfraRed? We can buy IR filters for virtually any SLR lens for as little as $60 in some cases. Why spend more to permanently convert a camera?

Digital cameras use a sensor, the electronic part that replaces the traditional film as the spot where your lens focuses light for presentation and capture inside of your camera. Unfortunately, digital sensors are sensitive to IR light just as they are sensitive to "normal" visible light. This means that they would normally record every image with a red/pink cast as the IR light is merged with the normally visible light. To prevent digital cameras from universally producing pink tinted photos, they have an IR blocking filter installed inside the camera when you buy it. This lets the camera take the pictures that we expect from our normal cameras.

You can put an IR filter on your lens and take IR pictures on many(most) digital cameras. But since they also have that internal IR blocking filter, very little IR gets through. This means that you wind up shooting pictures, even on a sunny day, that have shutter speeds over a full second, often much slower. While this puts inexpensive IR photography within reach of most digital SLR owners (all you need is your camera, an IR filter, and a tripod) the slow speeds make it difficult to work with. As an added challenge, you cannot view through the lens on your SLR to compose the shot while the filter is on, and in-camera metering is essentially useless.

The IR conversion process is basically the act of opening up the camera and removing that built-in filter that blocks most of the IR light from reaching the sensor. It also can require adjustments to the metering and focus settings in the camera to compensate for the changes.

After reading up on several services that offer IR conversions, and seeing posts of happy customers in some blogs, I decided upon LifePixel to convert the camera I would be using.

The upside of converting an SLR are fairly obvious. Higher quality camera, variety of lenses, generally greater features in the cameras, etc. Essentially all of the same reasons one would choose an SLR over a compact camera to begin with. But compacts have their advantages too.

When using a compact camera, the focus adjustment aspect of IR photography is removed from the equation. No more adjusting focus settings manually to compensate. It's just a minor nuisance, but it's still a factor.

The other benefit of using a compact camera is potentially huge. I use Nikon digital SLRs, and while some other brands may have live viewing on the screen, my Nikons do not. (The new D3/D300 series is adding this but that's far outside my price range for this project). What this really means to me is that I'd be able to get a better view of the way the final shot will look while viewing the rear LCD, something I could not accomplish on my SLRs.

My goal with IR photography is to enjoy taking them, have fun with the pictures in my digital darkroom, and if I ever become so lucky, to sell a few to stock houses. Being as fun and accessibility are my key goals, I decided on a compact camera for sheer ease of use. Also, it's far cheaper than buying a fully featured SLR to send in for conversion. Sending an older SLR wasn't my preference as I wanted something with at least 10MP.

The last part of the equation is something I had to take a leap of faith on. How a specific camera reacts to IR photography in color mode.

Every camera has different color handling firmware in it. Simply put, this is the software that decides how the digital sensor interprets the images it sees into color photographs. Some software reacts well to IR images in color mode, and some do not. The perk of capturing the images in color mode instead of the camera's B&W mode, is that you can get some stunning images as a result of the camera's color software struggling to make sense of the IR images. The sample page at LifePixel has some great side by side comparisons that show how this effect works.

I looked through a wide range of compact digital cameras, scanning every brand and type I could fine for nearly 2 weeks. In the end I chose the Canon G9 for several reasons:

1. Raw file support
2. Custom White Balance (essential for IR, we'll get into this another day)
3. 12.1MP
4. Large 3 inch rear LCD for previewing pictures.

You can read more about the camera at the Digital Photography Review website's G9 Review. I highly recommend them to anyone looking for info on specific cameras.

Unfortunately this last part will be a bit of a leap of faith for me. The G9 is brand new out on the market and I've been unable to locate any IR images captured through a G9. The shots I've seen from a G7 looked good, but that's not a guarantee. I'll post up some IR shots from it as soon as I get the chance.

So I purchased a G9 from Adorama (If I'd looked around I might have been able to save a few bucks elsewhere, but these guys consistently do well by me, including during a shipping SNAFU they paid to overnight me a lens I needed the next morning. I admit, I'm brand loyal when someone puts effort into providing me with good service.).

When it t arrived a few days later and I then shipped it off to LifePixel for conversion. It should be delivered back to me later today, and I'll continue with details when it's here.