Infrared Photography

A dear friend of mine has peaked my interested in digital infrared photography. Since none of my dSLR’s can be converted (they are Pentax, every place I have checked only does Canon and Nikon and a few other brands) I decided to buy a converted Fuji A900 point and shoot to start with. It should be here next week. In the mean time I have been looking around the photo sites at what other people are doing. One photographer that blows me away is Niek Haak of the Netherlands. You can view his infrared gallery at:

http://www.pbase.com/nh/infrared

His work is just amazing. I love black and white photography especially the high contrast images. That is probably the biggest thing that draws me to infrared photography the fact that the black and white images (you can do color infrared, but I am not a big fan of it) are very high contrast, moody and impactful.

If you don’t want to buy a converted digital camera for IR and provided that your camera is sensative to IR you can try something like a Hoya R72 Infrared filter that you screw on to the front of your camera or lens. Saddly the new Pentax dSLR’s like the K10D and K20D that I have are far to well sheilded from infrared light. While you can take infrared shots with them the exposure time is measured in minutes and if you have any movement of any kind you will get a blurred shot. Another drawback is the infrared filter is dark enough that you will not be able to see anything through your view finder, this makes framing and zooming a real problem.

A camera that has been converted for IR has had several protective layers/filters removed from the CCD and an IR filter added. You can then see what you are getting on the cameras LCD or through the view finder (dSLR) as well as zoom, etc. The Fuji that I bought was the least expensive IR only camera I could find that has a 4X optical zoom. Since I generally only like IR landscape shots more zoom isn’t really something I feel a need for. I bought the camera from http://www.maxmax.com for $375.00 plus shipping if your interested, it is the Fuji A900. I bought the IR-Only version so it can only be used for IR photography which is all I plan to use it for since I have two dSLR’s. However, you can also buy it as an IR+Visible which means you can put a filter on the front of the lens and use it for regular color photography as well. The IR+Visible model of the Fuji A900 is $300 plus shipping.

Once I get the camera I will be posting more on it and infrared photography.

Pentax K20D Demo Video

While surfing some Pentax forums I came across a cool Pentax K20D Demonstration video.