X-Ray filter??

Hello!

Anyone can tell me more about those X-Ray filters?
What are the opportunities of X-Ray filter, what can I photo with it?
And where can I ask for one in Europe?

I would be very happy if you could post some samples with tihs filter, if anyone have any.

Thank you very much!
BTW I have Fuji S602 digital camera.

Bye

When I was a kid, every comic book had an ad for X-Ray Glasses on the back cover. Imagine the possibilities!
Maybe you can find out who still makes them?

As for photographing through X-Ray filters I suspect that, worse than for more common Infra-Red filters, that part of the non-visible spectrum is well beyond the sensitivity of many / most / all digital cameras.
--
Pixelated

model said:

Hello!

Anyone can tell me more about those X-Ray filters?

Click to expand...

They're not actually x-ray, they are infrared filters. They are very useful for both artistic and technical purposes. Some fairly dishonest folks take these filters (availiable from reputable camera stores in digital camera sizes for around $40) and promise gullible people that they will be able to see through clothing, and try to charge up to $250 for the same filters.

They are not "heat vision", that's the "TV adventure movie" version of infrared. Infrared is light that's "redder than red". You can't see it, but some cameras can. It has several interesting properties.

1) The sky doesn't have much infrared, so it appears dramatically dark, nearly black, with blazing white clouds.

2) Healthy green vegetation reflects lots of infrared, so plants, trees, and grass glow white.

3) human skin acquires a translucency that some people (including me) find beautiful. On fair skinned people, you can often see all the veins right through the skin. Lips become light colored.

4) some fabrics are slightly transparent to infrared (the so called "X-Ray effect") but this does not work very well. It only works on certain very thin, very tight, synthetic clothing.

5) Makeup often becomes translucent.

On a "regular" digital camera like your Fuji, IR filters reduce your effective film speed to something between ISO 10 and ISO 0.1, so you cannot easily use your camera hand held, and need a tripod. This is because the camera contains a special filter (called a "hot mirror") that protects the CCD from infrared light.

On certain cameras (mainly Sony Camcorders with the "NightShot" feature) the "hot mirror" can be disengaged by flipping a lever on the camera, and this gives you so much sensitivity that you can take pictures with the camera handheld, even pictures of moving subjects.

model said:

What are the opportunities of X-Ray filter, what can I photo with it?

Click to expand...

Not much of what you want, if you're after "x-ray" pictures. Sorry.

model said:

And where can I ask for one in Europe?

Click to expand...

Any photo store. But ask for an infrared filter, like a Wratten 87, or Hoya RM90.

model said:

I would be very happy if you could post some samples with tihs
filter, if anyone have any.

Click to expand...

Here's an infrared picture of St. Mary's Antiochen Church in Livonia, Michigan. Note the dark sky and white trees.

http://www.pbase.com/image/1097361

model said:

Thank you very much!

Click to expand...

You're welcome.

Joseph

As a followup, you can get some of the older digicams that don't have this hotmirror and do excellent infrared work. I have a Nikon CP800 that I use with an 89B filter with wonderful results. The Nikon CP950 is a standard for infrared, as well some of the other cameras that are only a few years old.
God Bless,
Jim
CP995, CP800
http://www.pbase.com/jrj02

Jim said:

As a followup, you can get some of the older digicams that don't
have this hotmirror and do excellent infrared work. I have a Nikon
CP800 that I use with an 89B filter with wonderful results. The
Nikon CP950 is a standard for infrared, as well some of the other
cameras that are only a few years old.

Click to expand...

Even the older ones had IR filters (Except for some of the Kodaks, where they were removable). They just wern't as good filters as we have now. I've removed the IR filter in CP950 and CP990 cameras for several local photographers who are really into IR.

Camera manufacturers make the IR filters better each year, to help reduce IR contamination, which some people actually do complain about. For example, my Canon S100 is sensitive to IR primarily in its red channel, so without an IR filter, any IR reflecting object (like a green plant) would acquire red, and would therefore look brown and unhealthy.

Ciao!

Joe

X ray filters are very cheap. Turn your camera on, find a brick wall and hold the lens up to the wall and snap.

Seriously, an x-ray filter would be a useless item, even if one were available. There are no x-rays below the ozone layer (about 50 km above your head). So a camera that could see only x-rays would not see much outside a few stray rays in hospitals or badly designed cathode ray tubes. X-ray machines used by medical folks must generate x-rays and have no optics other then colomaters.

If you wanted to put a piece of black electricians tape over your lens it would act as an x-ray filter. Unfortunately the lenses in all cameras would not focus x-rays on the CCD/CMOS chip. X-ray telescopes that do focus x-rays are grazing optics that look like a metal stovepipe with gradually decreasing inside diameter. X-rays hit the metal at a very accute angle, about the same angle you would use on water to skip a rock.

model said:

Hello!

Anyone can tell me more about those X-Ray filters?
What are the opportunities of X-Ray filter, what can I photo with it?
And where can I ask for one in Europe?

I would be very happy if you could post some samples with tihs
filter, if anyone have any.

Thank you very much!
BTW I have Fuji S602 digital camera.

Bye

Click to expand...

--
Ken Eis

Joseph S. Wisniewski wrote:
Great post !

Joseph S Wisniewski said:

On a "regular" digital camera like your Fuji, IR filters reduce
your effective film speed to something between ISO 10 and ISO 0.1,
so you cannot easily use your camera hand held, and need a tripod.
This is because the camera contains a special filter (called a "hot
mirror") that protects the CCD from infrared light.

Click to expand...

You can test the sensitivity of your camera wrt infrered by taking a picture of the front of a remote control (no IR-filter needed) while a button is pressed. If the camera is sensitive to IR, you'll see the IR-leds that are transmitting the signal light up (e.g. on the D100 they are a magenta-like color).

Jörg