Today I ventured out to the nearby Memorial Park in Mortdale NSW armed with some new Infrared filters to try.
I had been impressed with some high contrast black and white landscape images by people using converted DSLR cameras so that IR light reaches the sensor rather than the visible light.
Before taking the plunge to have an older Nikon D7100 converted, a trial is to use some IR filters screwed onto the lens.
Unfortunately in this approach there are some challenges.
The first is that you cannot see out through the normal viewfinder as it is very dark. Exposure times can therefore be quite long also - I selected about 10 seconds at F8 and ISO 1000. Tripod necessary.
The next problem is to focus as IR light is not the same as visible light and every lens needs to be rotated a different amount. Older lenses sometimes had a red line to indicate the focusing point for IR at infinity. No such luck with the lenses I was using. Part of the reason to use F8 rather than being wide open was to get help from increased depth of field.
White balance is also a problem that I am yet to understand fully. But it is different for IR.
The other lesson from this outing is perhaps the choice of subject (for Infrared) is more unpredictable. Perhaps being more out in the open rather than having most of the subject being in shadows. Learning ...
