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New Venture – IR (*** ASSISTANCE REQUIRED ***)
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Pic first… (experiment only.. seeking help)
OK… bought an R72… being trying to get my head around using it though… this thing is 10 times tougher than the B+W 110 filter.
Problems:
* Do you set your custom White Balance with the filter on or off? I tried both, the result vary from pink to dark red respectively. Patch of grass was used.
* Exposure times are anywhere between 10-30 seconds. Granted I use a 40D which probably has a strong IR filter onboard, but this still seems very long. It has a nice effect of the clouds but trees shaking in the wind become a problem.
* I’m using this guide to convert the images http://www.pbase.com/dlarson2/ir_work_flow but I rarely seem to be able to get any colour into the images like this guy has in his sky. I can get images that have either a green or blue hue over the entire image.
Anyone got ‘The Total Dummies Guide to shooting with an R72 filter and Post Processing Workflow’?
Any help… send it this way…
Cheers
JHere’s another… I used an Action downloaded from the web to do the post processing… notice the blue hue over everything:
Granted this one was taken in a bit of shade… which is probably not the best where IR is concerned.
Hey John,
I was in your place maybe a year ago or so… Trying to get decent IR image with my 20d…
Starting from the most obvious things (as you requested total dummies guide):1. Canons dSLRs have very low IR sensitivity, except for 5d (but still far cry from nikon d70), i don’t know about 1d series. So 20-40 exposures are normal, nothing you can do about it really, I’ve got some nice shots with exposures up to 4 minutes.
2. Shoot at lowest iso always (unless you plan to convert it to BW). Channel swapping and auto leveling tend to multiply noise ten-fold.
3. Always set your WB with filter on reading from grass or trees with leaves (but not evergreen ones). I usually keep one shot of grass taken with the filter on on my memory card and use it when necessary.
4. If you use Lightroom – forget about it with IR shots – LR for some reason overrides as shot settings and applies its own, i hope they dealt with this issue in new LR 2.0 I personally use Capture One Pro 3.7.6 for converting Raw’s to tiffs.
5. If you shoot in JPGs you don’t have to deal with that sort of problems but you can’t fix your WB.
6. Post processing – for BW there isn’t much to say, you did a good job on that shot of yours, but you might have to burn/dodge a bit, sometimes more, especially when your grass turns out dirty gray instead of snow white…
7. For colour – first two things: swap red and blue channels – you can do that using adjustment layer -> channel mixer, with output blue set blue to 0% and red to 100% and with output red set blue to 100% and red to 0%. After that try autoloevels or adjust levels manually if you prefer more control over the process.At this stage you image will be sort of bluish with red/pink cast in the highlights. I usually use hue/saturation adjustment and desaturate reds or magenta to 50%. You can try playing with hue in blues to get the tight sort of blue.
That’s my way and I don’t claim it to be the only one or even to be the right way ;) Hope it helps a bit.
Here’s a good article on IR: http://gilad.deviantart.com/journal/5939098/
I’ve got some IR shots on my site, if you want to have a look, all shot with 20d.
Really appreciate the info there V… very useful.
Any idea how you calculate what your exposure should be. You mention having exposures up to 4 mins… is this via trial and error or is there a method/guideline?
Again, info is greatly appreciate. Going to have a deeper read now.
Cheers
JUsually trial and error, but what you can do is shoot at iso 3200 and get the correct exposure, and then work out the time for iso 100. I always preferred trial and error.
Cheers V. I sound like a scratched record but I really appreciate the info.
I’ll keep trying and hopefully figure this out sooner rather than later. I suppose to actually get a half decent image on my first attempt is a good start.
PS. Love the IR stuff over at the site. One of my colleagues also very impressed.
Hi John
I just got a hold of this software, has some cool fliters and IR that might interest you
http://www.tiffen.com/products.html?tablename=dfxDee
Cheers Dee.
I’ve heard of Tiffen Filters… supposed to be very good… it applies filter effect post-processing though… I’m trying to get some ‘true’ (not sure if that’s the right way of describing it) IR off the camera.
Let me know though how the Tiffen Filters stuff goes though. Might be of some interest.
Will do John. Just had a quick dabble and seems great., Wiling to send out a copy to you if you fancy it.
DeeV… if you’re out there…
I’m taking a shot of green grass to use as my Custom White Balance. When shooting the grass with the filter on what WB setting are you supposed to use on the camera, just Auto?
Here are the unprocessed results shown in Capture One Version 4 (free license with a Sandisk card I bought). Do these look right to you? The grass looks very grey in the sample shot.
Green Grass Shot: ISO 200 20sec Auto White Balance
Sample Shot: ISO 200 20sec Custom White Balance
Cheers
JHey John,
I usually shoot grass at manual and move the camera a good bit to get sort of uniform gray (or actually red). The WB used for that shot doesn’t matter.As for your the second shot – it looks more or less right – it’s really hard to tell how it will turn out once you reverse colours (if that’s what you intend to do). It’s really down to trial and error and getting a feeling for what you’re doing.
As for the grass coming out gray – it almost always is some sort of gray, you can push the exposure further, but then you’ll blow the skies, so I usually just burn the grass a good bit in PS, or lighten it with a curve. I’ll see if i have any decent looking colour IR shot and I’ll post some screenshots of my workflow (if i have one that is).
Cheers
V
I skipped tiff conversion in capture one and sharpening as a final step in cs3. The rest i hope is pretty self explanatory. If you have any questions, ask!
Cheers
V
Cheers V…. I see what you are doing. I’ll give it another try when the weather picks up again. All gone a bit gloomy this evening.
J
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