Thread: Infrared Photography

Some days ago, I went onto a forum, and found a topic about infrared camera stuff. I checked it out, and found, that if you point a remote-control on your camera and press the buttons, you can see on the camera's LCD (provided it's digital ofcourse) screen, whether or not your camera can pick up infrared lighting. The remote-control will emit weird purple/red/blue light.

I found that my camera could do this, so I read further, and found, that it's pretty easy to make a visible-light filter. It's quite simple actually. You just take some exposed and developed colour film, and take the ends that are completely black. Get two of these, make them cover your lense, and bam, you have a visible-light filter.
Now that you've isolated most of the visible-light, you can take pictures of the infrared light. Also called IR.

I've made a pretty smart filter myself, that filters out just about enough visible-light. This creates a very cool effect. I have yet to take good pictures, but here are 2 poor samples.





So, what do you think? If the weather fits me, I'll go take some better close-up pictures tomorrow. Pictures taken on distance seem to get blured.

Originally Posted by Marvo

Some days ago, I went onto a forum, and found a topic about infrared camera stuff. I checked it out, and found, that if you point a remote-control on your camera and press the buttons, you can see on the camera's LCD (provided it's digital ofcourse) screen, whether or not your camera can pick up infrared lighting. The remote-control will emit weird purple/red/blue light.

I repair electronics for a living and have known about the IR detection of cameras for use as a remote output detector for many years. I only mention that to mention that pretty much any camera with a CCD-type optical sensor will do that. Just about every camcorder and security camera is able to be used in "complete darkness" as long as you have an IR source. So, you can use your camcorder for IR pictures, too, with your filter.

I found that my camera could do this, so I read further, and found, that it's pretty easy to make a visible-light filter. It's quite simple actually. You just take some exposed and developed colour film, and take the ends that are completely black. Get two of these, make them cover your lense, and bam, you have a visible-light filter.

Now that you've isolated most of the visible-light, you can take pictures of the infrared light. Also called IR.

I did not, however, know that you could make an effective IR pass filter like that. That's pretty cool. It makes sense though. Many darkly-tinted plastics will do that (to some degree). Notice that electronic equipment with a remote control sensor always has a piece of dark, smoked plastic covering said sensor. That keeps interference from outside lighting from tricking the sensor.

Yeah, I thought it pretty weird aswell. 3 layers tops it though. At this point, the IR will start getting weaker. So weak, that the shutter time gets too long to take good pictures.

Damn, I need a tripod

You should be able to capture some "ghostly", dreamy photos in the infrared spectrum. The one of the bushes looks cool.

Nice, you can do the same with phone camera's, i had the same setup with a k750i with interesting results. I like the second pic the best.

If you wireup some powerful IR LED's you could make an infrared torch type thing.. It would enable you to see in the dark.. the human eye wouldnt be able to see the light.
Remember aswell that the camera has a filter to block out most of the infrared light.. If you ever decide to throw your camera away try opening it up (being careful) and take out the filter inside, then see what results you get.

I don't think my camera has such a filter? It doesn't look like it's decreasing the IR.

By the way, here's my homemade visible-light filter
http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/6553/p1010193ah9.jpg [pretty darn big picture]

I also like the one with the bushes. The white effect is pretty sweet.

edit: I also just tried to make my own tripod, but that's not as easy, as it may look.

All camera's should have an ir filter, it stops images becoming washed out by the infrared light. I really dont suggest you try to remove it unless its a camera you're throwing away as much can go wrong.

some examples:
http://www.hackaday.com/2006/12/20/d...ilter-removal/

http://www.hackaday.com/2005/03/14/m...frared-webcam/

I love the bottletop filter.. genius , beats my idea of just holding the film up infront of my phone heh.

That's pretty cool. I'm probably gonna get a new camera with built-in IR stuff, that I can disable and enable (I'm quite sure that exists), but I'm not sure.
Either way, I'll get a new camera, and if I feel like trashing the old camera, then I'll try and remove the IR filter. I'm quite smart on such stuff, so I guess it's quite easy.
Currently, I have an Olympus Digital 410, also known as µ-mju 410 digital.