Infrared landscape

[3ntreri]

• Where Was it Taken?
  - In the parking lot of a restaurant overlooking a Nanaimo park
  
• What settings did you use?
  - Aperture at f/4 for 3.2 seconds on ISO 500 (slightly over-exposed, but it was on purpose)
  
• What gear (camera, lens etc) did you use?
  - Canon EOS Rebel T1i, 18-55mm IS Kit Lens, Hoya R7 Infrared filter, Joby Gorillapod
  
• Why did you compose the shot as you did?
  - I wanted to get the leafy maple tree because I knew it'd do the Wood Effect nicely, but I laso wanted to get the water, the sky, and the interesting parking lot. Basically I wanted an interesting shot with lots to look at. I like how different types of trees reflect different amounts of IR light
  
• What post production work have you done on the shot (if any)?
  - The first image is the untouched JPG from the camera
  - The 2nd image had the color temp brought down to 2000K, plus some Levels and contrast adjustments
  - The 3rd image was converted to b&w to be a little more realistic while emphasizing the white leaves of the maple.
  
• What were you hoping to achieve with the shot?
  - The white leaf Wood Effect
  
• What did you do well?
  - Got the leaves pure white
  
• How could you have improved it?
  - Better focus, better composition

Untouched JPG direct from camera


false color in Adobe Camera RAW by adjusting color temperature and tweaking levels and contrast


final converted to b&w for more realism and more shocking IR effects

I go much more in depth on my blog: Dave Learns Photography: The leaves are turning.... White? (Infrared Photography)

Take a look around and feel free to leave feedback while you're there!

[3ntreri]

Well, upon further reading, it turns out that Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) is not very good at tweaking white balance for infrared shots. Here's the same file processed using Canon Digital Photo Professional (DPP) which came with the camera:



The white balance was tweaked by simply clicking the dropper tool on where I wanted the white point to be, it handled the extreme color variations on its own. It also did a much better job with the sharpening and noise reduction, giving me distinct blues & reds, rather than many shades of purple.



Here's it is tweaked in Photoshop by adding an inverse layer and setting the blend mode to Color.

Here are a couple more that I rescued using the technique above:



The blur is from the movement of the tree because of the long shutter speed (30 sec!)



Did you know apples glow in infrared light? I didn't!

[douglas]

Neat pictures. InterestingPP

[arlon]

I might have to look into some other RAW processing software. I just use a custom white balance shot off a green card or grass. Both seem to work pretty well. I only shoot .jpg because of the lack of WB range in adobe camera raw.

[3ntreri]

That was another thing I've been experimenting with, arlon. I set up a custom WB in the camera based on a close-up shot of a sunlit leaf. Unfortunately its been overcast or rainy all week so I can't really test it. The one shot I did get seemed to cure the the red cast issue though.

[arlon]

The grass WB is great for shooting jpg. but it would be cool to shoot raw and still have the ability to adjust down the WB far enough to get the needed correction. I'm curious if I could use the raw file from IR to generate some single file HDR shots. Problem with adobe and RAW is even if you use the "as shot" wb (from the grass) for some reason it still can't correct it back far enough. I take it back as far as I can in from the RAW file then use "remove color cast" to get closer to what I want.. There just has to be a better way to get IR HDR.. (-:}

Photomatix also doesn't see the cyan blown highlights as blown highlights and it tries to include them in the shot (why I tried to use single RAW file for the HDR generation).

I just think better RAW IR control (like you displayed) could be very useful..