I still experiment occasionally with infrared photography, using a Hoya R72 filter on my Canon 300D (the original Digital Rebel). I haven’t spent a lot of time shooting IR, mainly because I’ve gotten tired of needing to plan out the long exposures necessary when using an unmodified camera. Too often, the results aren’t what I want because of the necessity of framing and focusing the shot on the tripod without the filter, then carefully screwing the filter on, hoping that I haven’t mucked up either the focus or the tripod position.
At this point I tend to prefer IR shots that have been converted to B&W, rather than IR images that have had false color applied in post-processing. Having said that, this is one IR shot that I’m quite happy with from last summer. The post-processing was a bit of a happy accident in Photoshop, but as with many accidents it’s opened my eyes to new possibilities for how to process images. The day I took this photo there was hardly a cloud in the sky, it was bright and sunny. In this case, the combination of the IR image and post-processing gives the image a very dreamy, almost otherworldly ambiance.
I plan on getting the 300D converted to a dedicated IR camera once I upgrade to a new body in a few months. Until then, I’ll keep occasionally experimenting with the setup that I have, and keep experimenting with different ways of post-processing the images, looking for happy accidents…
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