Strange world of infrared photography

To start, a bit of background on my so far very brief journey with infrared. I first had a go at photography and infrared back in school around 1993-4 time using what I think was Ilford IR black and white film but don't quote me on that. I cant find any photos from that time now unfortunately.

After leaving school I didn't really touch a camera again until I got my first DSLR, a Canon 550D in 2011. At some point between getting the camera and 2012 a magazine ran an article on infrared photography. Not knowing you could do this I soon went and go the Hoya R72 filter and off I went to try this different form of photography.

I soon realised that it was not going to be as easy as I thought. Everything was going to be a long exposure and had to be pre focused since you could not see through the view finder once the filter was attached.
This meant having movement in the photos and not being very sharp, which you can see in the trees below which I took back in 2012 with the white balance set to green from the grass.

This was my very first infrared photo from March 2012. I cant remember if this was a custom white balance or if I had messed in Photoshop.

This was also an early photo from the 550D taken in May 2012 near Mother Shipton's Cave North Yorkshire. I recently put this through LR and this is what I ended up with.

So for anyone thats not tried IR this is the raw image you get from the camera if you leave the WB set to auto. You get a very red cast as you can see and it's surprising that there is any colour info in there.

This photo was taken in 2012 at Temple Newsam in Leeds. I have recently reprocessed it into a mono which works very well for infrared images with high contrast. I also processed it in LR using some custom profiles which basically swap the RB channels.

After this shot play with IR the filter went away and ive not touched it since. I always wanted to do more of this type of photography but know that a converted camera was the way to go.
Now there are many options here from getting a camera converted to a particular IR wavelength like 720nm, but that means that you can only take infrared images at this wavelength or higher.
Your other option is getting it converted to full spectrum which removes all filters fitted to the sensor and allows it to see all wavelengths from UV, visible and upto IR.
In todays world of mirrorless cameras, they make a much better option than converting a DSLR especially one with an electronic viewfinder as it allows you to see what you will get. kind of seeing in IR.

So this Christmas 2021 I took the plunge and purchased a full spectrum Canon M50 and got a 590nm and 720nm filter. The 590 allows more colour info through giving richer false colour images. The 720 lets a little red through so gives a much more subtle colour but makes better mono. There is an 850nm filter that is best for mono which is on the list.

Now being that its only February and there has not been much in the way of bright sunny days and also no leaves on the trees which reflects a lot of IR light, Ive not got many images yet but as you can guess I had to get out and play with the new toy.

Here are some test shots showing the original raw and then a mono conversion and lastly one processed using a custom profile in LR.

Last one for this post is of something I have seen for many years driving past it but never took the time to go look what it was. Turns out its an old whittling well and is a grade II listed building. It was used for watering live stock back in the day.

So that all for now. I have got a new filter on order which should give some very different images but thats for next time.

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