Anyway, I'll tell you something about my experiences with Infrared Photography. A few years ago I heard about it for the first time. It sounded really interesting and when I saw some infrared photo's I was sold immediately. With Infrared Photography you can create magical snowlike landscapes.
As you can see in this photo the trees and the grass turn white. To create these kind of Infrared photos I did some reasearch on the internet and bought myself a Hoya R72 (IR filter). This is a very dark red filter which of course filters out most of the normal light we see so only the near infrared light is left. Yes, near infrared light, we can not photograph actual infrared light (warmth) with a normal camera, so this is a combination of colors and infrared light. Most camera's have a infrared block filter on their sensor so the colors will be the same on the photo as how we experience them. This block filter stops most of the infrared light from falling onto the sensor, because of this we need very long exposure times (20-30 sec) when shooting with a normal camera. Besides that we can only shoot in bright daylight and framing is hard because you can't see anything thought the lens because of the filter.
So infrared photography is not something you can easily do, it's quite a drag and it takes a lot of time to make a good shot. I really loved doing it, but I hated the long exposure times. Especcially in the Netherlands there's a lot of wind all the time, so you really have to be lucky to get a photo on which the plants are not blurred because of their motion in the wind.
Later I found out there's a way to remove the infrared block filter from your camera, but that's a dangerous task. You have to disarm the camera completely to get to the sensor and instead of just removing the block filter you have to replace it with a clean piece of glass exactly the same size without getting any dust on the sensor. There are some companys in america that are willing to do the job for you but it will cost between $200,- and $300,-. It's really expensive and also a bit of a risk, if somehting goes wrong it will be hard to contact the company. So I decided to look around on the internet and I found a converted Canon 300D for sale. Less expensive than sending your camera to america and it worked perfectly fine. So of course I bought it and I'm really happy with it. One thing though, I did discover some dust on my sensor, but this week I'll get it cleaned by a professional and I just hope it's alright after that. Otherwise we'll just have to do a little bit more photoshopping afterwards ;)
Here are some photos I shot with my converted camera, enjoy!
