Infrared

TimNielsen

Active member
Messages
60
Reaction score
1
Location
Vancouver, CA
I have my SD14 on order, and one of the main reasons I wanted to get this camera, is it's infrared ability.

Can anyone recommend a good IR only filter to use? I have the 10mm-20mm Sigma lense coming, probably what I'll use most for IR experimenting.
 
Hi Tim,
I have my SD14 on order, and one of the main reasons I wanted to get
this camera, is it's infrared ability.

Can anyone recommend a good IR only filter to use? I have the
10mm-20mm Sigma lense coming, probably what I'll use most for IR
experimenting.
I would recommend B+W093, it is best for SDxx infrared, R72 is my second choice. You will need 77mm for 10-20. Or you can use Cokin via P adapter.

Or you can do what's is not pure ir by just remove dust protector. If you discard the blue and green channel with this method you will get near ir and black sky too. Or you can do what Lazlo had shown us here:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1027&message=24131210
S

--

'Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.'
  • Mark Twain
 
According to Sigma any filter over 4mm thick will cause vignetting on the 10-20, so you'll need a low profile one (and the Cokin P adapter will definitely not work). Also a 093 will produce a much stronger IR effect than an R72.
 
According to Sigma any filter over 4mm thick will cause vignetting on
the 10-20, so you'll need a low profile one (and the Cokin P adapter
will definitely not work). Also a 093 will produce a much stronger IR
effect than an R72.
The beauty of stronger IR effect is more desirable for some, myself included. Though the R72 gives you faster shutter speed due to weaker cut off but for SDxx, exposure is not a problem as I had been consistently gets 1/160s for a sunny f8 iso100 and 1/640s for R72 on the average.

For Cokin I will test it and see if it is, since SDxx with 1.7 factor versus the 1.6 of NiCan. The thickness Sigma refers to is most likely for the screw in type but Cokin covers much wider.
S

--

'Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.'
  • Mark Twain
 
This is slightly off topic - but it is an idea I have had for some time regarding Foveon and infrared. I don´t have a Foveon camera - but you that do might consider trying it.

In Foveon the third layer is most sensitive to IR. This layer is also most sensitive to red.

So - if you had a minus red filter (e.g wratten 44 or 44A or B&W 081) then you could (maybe) make very nice color images where the red layer is now an IR layer - but the green and blue layers work as usual.

This might work and give very nice color IR effects.

It depends on (1) the minus red filter letting IR through and (2) the IR being mostly in the third layer.

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/support/techPubs/b3akic/b3akic.jhtml

http://www.robertwhite.co.uk/pdf/B+W_filter_handbook.pdf

In the B&W link above you can see filter transmission for all their filters. And the 081 looks very nice.

For Bayer you could do something similar with minus green I suppose. That would be a B&W 061. This filter is not as clean as 081 though. And all layers will be sensitive to IR - even the blue and red. So - the Foveon would be much better for this I assume.

--
Roland
 
SPM wrote:

For Cokin I will test it and see if it is, since SDxx with 1.7 factor versus the 1.6 of NiCan. The thickness Sigma refers to is most likely for the screw in type but Cokin covers much wider.

I use a Cokin P now on my 17-70 and it just barely works at 17mm. It would vignette at 16mm.
 
It will save me time not having to digging out my cokin stuffs. As I recall now, it was the 20mm that I used with the P adapter when I started IR a few years ago.
S
--

'Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.'
  • Mark Twain
 
Interesting as I never heard of this brand, have you use it? good price too.
For non-film IR the frequency range is pretty specific. Only Hoya and Singh-Ray are in the running. Tiffen (argh) might be better than B+W in this case. Harrison might not have enough coatings but it's the right frequencies, better than B+W. You couldn't go wrong with Singh-Ray, and Hoya might not be quite as good but it's great, too, and with Harrison we're using old Canon FL lenses anyway so why not?

If you go to their website, you see lots of heavy hitter names like Galen Rowell. Their sales pitches make sense except a few basic filters where they are just band-wagonning because you're there and Tiffen would do for your basic mercury vapor light filter.

Their best sales pitches are the IR filter with what you can see are the perfect frequencies, and polarizer and neutral density filters that do not require as much light as others--about one stop less than others is a huge diff in low light.

The only filter I've used so far is UV. I thought I'd buy a pile of filters for Sigma 72mm until I run out of money, and then actually use a different lens size with UV filter and funny looking 72mm adapter. I thought that would be a bad idea but I was obsessed and did it anyway. I'm a filter-rich dilettante, haven't even used the IR yet. It kind of scares me to contemplate taking out the IR filter, and focus screen(to hack Olympus microprism split-screen to fit since Katzeyes aren't in production right now).
 
SPM wrote:
For Cokin I will test it and see if it is, since SDxx with 1.7 factor
versus the 1.6 of NiCan. The thickness Sigma refers to is most likely
for the screw in type but Cokin covers much wider.

I use a Cokin P now on my 17-70 and it just barely works at 17mm. It
would vignette at 16mm.
I'm using the Cokin P system, along with a Cokin wide-angle adaptor (just one slot instead of three, lower profile) on my 10-20 - at 10mm, it vignettes just a little but is fine beyond that.

Then I use a Cokin P Gel holder, with a Lee 4x4" IR gel inserted - it's just a little smaller than what the gel holder is looking for, so I added a thin sliver of tape around the edges of the Lee filter to have it light-tight in the holder.

--
---> Kendall
http://InsideAperture.com
http://www.pbase.com/kgelner
http://www.pbase.com/sigmadslr/user_home
 
If you read frequency specs for Hoya and Singh-Ray IR filters, it's a
similar idea done a different way.
Any pointers to Hoya and Sing-Ray IR filters of the kind I proposed?

--
Roland
 

Keyboard shortcuts

Back
Top