40D Infrared Photography ?!

I have the 17-85mm lens.
I got only a few red spots in the image.

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Canon 40D/17-85mm/580EX II + G9/430EX/ST-E2
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http://www.autospeed.ro
http://www.amazona.ro

+5EV?

you really have to go all manual on this. the camera automatics wont help you at all with IR pictures

I am also new to shooting IR, but I think I can shed some light. The filter on the 40D (and all SLR cameras) is a bandpass filter allowing light from approximately 400-700nm to reach the sensor. It greatly reduces the light above and below this range, including the near infrared (NIR) which exists from approximately 700-900nm. Therefore, adding an additional filter will not increase the amount of light that reaches the sensor in the NIR. In fact, any filter will actually block a little light at all wavelengths, including the region it is supposed to pass. It just blocks the non-desired wavelengths a whole lot more. Now that we know this, it is apparent that we are blocking all wavelengths! The amount of NIR sneaking through is very minimal. That is why VERY LONG exposure times are necessary and the process will only work under light conditions where NIR actually exists. The sun and most incandescent bulbs emit high energy in the NIR, but most florescent bulbs do not. You might experiment with the custom settings on your 40D to increase the amount of red and decrease the amount of all other colors. I hope this helps. Cheers

...some clothes, anyway: h t t p : www.kaya-optics.com/products/experiments.shtml (remove the spaces)

The fact is that many wavelengths pass through certain kinds of clothing, particularly some synthetic fibers, and particularly when wet. If you can detect those wavelengths, you can convert the image into the visible spectrum and see all kinds of things your subject probably doesn't want you seeing.

But I suspect everyone already knew this...remember the whole body scanner that the govt wanted to get the TSA but were rejected? These scanners are more of less capable of painting false color and shaded images that look like fairly realistic naked renderings.

As far as the ethics of such things go (like the NakedBeach 5000 product on the above-linked website), I'm of two minds. On one hand, I get that people don't know their emitting this kind of information. On the other hand, we are all the time reflecting these rays and letting them escape into the aether. Is it really illegal or unethical to detect rays flying at you?

This is similar to the argument for and against radar detectors. If the police transmit a signal and I own a radio that simply tunes and receives that signal, should that be illegal in an ostensibly free society? Big brother gets to paint me in radiation that I'm not allowed to receive?

It's a thinker.

I just was looking into that also and googled this website. The guy shows how you get the pic. Modifying the red, blue and green channels
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Canon 40D Infrared Photography Tests « Digital ImageMaker

The Canon 40D (available from B&H Photo) is an impressive camera. But how does it handle infrared photography? For these tests we used a Hoya R72 filter on ...
dimagemaker.com/2008/03/... canon-40d-infrared-photography-tests - Cached

I think as a practical matter you need to get the camera coverted for IR use. The main problem is that unless you ditch the filter on the image sensor that filters out the IR, you have to do very long exposures resulting in noise and/or blur. Most people shoot landscapes which are static, but if there's any wind all the trees/plants get blurry.

There are a couple of outfits that do this service for a fee (something like $300-$400), lifepixel.com for one. They also provide instructional videos for the do it yourselfer. I'm a reasonably good tinkerer, but it looks out of my league when you consider avoiding dust etc. I've also seen a guy that offers the service cheaper on ebay. You can have an IR filter like an r-72 put directly on the image sensor so you don't need to add it to the lens. or you can just have the IR excluding filter removed.

I've been using an old olympus point and shoot (the c-3030) that for whatever reason is particularly sensitive to IR. I use a hoya R72 near-ir filter and still need exposures of at least 1/2 second in daylight. It's a pretty crappy camera by today's standards, but I can get some interesting shots with it. Getting a dslr converted theoretically would allow hand-held shots. I heard the astrophotography versions of EOS cameras may also allow more IR than the standard versions.

I converted my PowerShot G2 using Lifepixel's tutorial although I just used a floppy disk (or at least the inside of it) for the IR filter as opposed to something more expensive. It didn't turn out too bad in my opinion...



What I like about using a P&S camera for IR is that I get to see what the image looks like right away. With a DSLR either you have the IR filter in front of the sensor (which means the image you'll see on the viewfinder would not be the IR image) or you have it in front of the lens (which means your image will be dark and you might have to compose your shot without the IR filter then put it back on). I do eventually want to convert a DSLR for IR so I can use different lenses with it but for now the G2 will suffice. I might get a better P&S though to replace the G2. An LX3 would be nice but no money at the moment.