How To Shoot Color Infrared Photos with a DSLR

[PhotoExtremist]

Color infrared photography darkens sky and brightens clouds and foliage (grass, trees, plants, and body hair). You will often see two main colors in an IR photo right after you take it, and that is brown and blue. You can change these two colors to whatever you wish in Photoshop.



Some DSLRs take IR photos better than others. In general, older cameras typically work better because they don't have an infrared blocking filter right in front of the sensor like newer cameras do.

In order to find out how well your camera is suited for IR, you will want to take a TV/VCR/DVD/radio remote control and point it at your camera with one of your fingers pushing a button while your camera takes a picture. If you preview the image on the back of your LCD screen and see a bright light coming from your remote, that means your camera is well suited for IR photography. If the light is dim, that means it can still do infrared but just not as well (the colors won't be as clear and rich), plus your exposure times are going to be longer (5-30 seconds in daylight). If you can't see the light at all, then -- you guessed it -- your camera won't be able to do IR photography at all unless you send in your camera to LifePixel to get it converted. If you do this, your camera will be modified permanently.

However, for right now, we'll just going to be going over how to use the Hoya R72 filter, because this is the most popular method for taking infrared photographs.

Because this filter is so dark, the camera will have a hard time focusing when you put it on your lens. For this reason, it is a good idea to focus your scene before you put the filter on, then switch to manual focus. It's also a very good reason to use a tripod because the dark filter will increase shutter speed times. You won't be able to get a professional-looking photo if you don't use a tripod or put it on a sturdy surface.

For the shot below, I was holding the camera down on a flat bridge rail.


When you get done taking your first photo, you may see that the photo looks completely red, pink, or purple. This is normal and is easy to fix. To fix it in Adobe RAW, simply take the two white balance sliders and slide them to the left. Usually the top slider will need to be shifted to the left until it hits 2000-2350, and the bottom slider is usually anywhere from -100 to -50. Take a look at this white balance chart to see examples of the different settings you can use.

In order to fix JPEG images in Photoshop, I usually click Image > Auto-Color.

After you get rid of the ugly red/pink/purple tint, your photos should look something similar to the one below (although it may be slightly more faded if your camera didn't get an A+ on the TV Remote Control Test.)



After that, you can remix the colors to anything you like! Again, the colors will usually start out being blue and brown as shown above, but you can change these in the Channel Mixer inside of Photoshop by switching the red channel with the blue one, or by using a Hue/Saturation adjustment. In order change the colors inside of the Channel Mixer, select Red as your Output Channel and then switch Blue to 100% and Red to 0%. After that, select Blue as your Output Channel and then type in 100% for Red and 0% for Blue. Click OK. Whiz-bang, your done!



After that, you can do some additional dodging and burning and some minor color adjustments to get the photos looking just how you want it.

Tutorial and photographs by Evan Sharboneau from PhotoExtremist.com.