This is a comparison of 13 filters on a converted full-spectrum Canon M200 camera, and on an unconverted Canon M200 camera, using a Canon EF-M 22mm f2 lens, on a tripod. Nearly all images were shot at f8 at ISO 100 and the shutter speed was set by the cameras in Av mode.
Warning: this is a very long post with 45 images! If you don't want to look at all the images, the last image is perhaps the most interesting, explained in the comments below all the images.
The comparison was done with the following filters, listed here with current pricing in 67mm size (except for the IR 850 which is 77mm size):
- Spencer Camera Visible + H-alpha - cuts UV and near IR ($110 Spencer Camera)
- Tiffen Hot Mirror - cuts UV and mid to deep IR ($130 B&H)
- K&F Concept Clear-Natural light pollution reduction for astro ($55 Amazon)
- Hoya FL-D - fluorescent to daylight conversion ($36 Adorama)
- Hoya Green X1 - passes green & a little IR ($28 Adorama)
- Tiffen Blue #47 - passes visible blue + IR ($50 B&H)
- ZB2/BG3 Violet Blue UV IR Dual-band Pass - ships from China ($16 eBay)
- Tiffen Yellow #15 - ~550 nm longpass ($25 B&H)
- Spencer Camera 590 nm longpass orange ($100 Spencer Camera)
- Hoya Red #25A - ~620 nm longpass ($37 Adorama)
- Hoya R72 - 720 nm longpass ($54 Amazon)
- IR 850 IR Xray - 850 nm longpass in 77mm filter size ($15 eBay)
- Neewer 950 nm IR X-ray longpass ($6 eBay)
All images were shot in a 45 minute period on a sunny afternoon with clouds in the sky. Most are in full Sun but there were a few times the Sun ducked behind a cloud. Images processed in DxO Photolab 5, uncropped but downsampled to 2160 pixels high.
Infrared post-processing is usually done to personal taste. I prefer false-color IR to have yellow-golden foliage with skies as close to blue as possible, so I processed the images in this post towards that end.
Many of the color IR images were processed with a global hue shift of varying amounts to do the standard IR red-blue channel color swap. This is done in DxO PL5 on the color tab by rotating the outer ring of the HSL control when the ‘white’ color is chosen for editing. The starting position is the outer ring point on the right side of the ring (the 3 o’clock position) — in the image captions, I indicate how much of a hue shift was done in a counter-clockwise direction. A 180 degree hue shift swaps red and blue channels (to the 9 o’clock position). A 165-degree shift is to about the 9:30 o’clock position.
Most of the images below were white balanced on the concrete in the driveway, in post-processing the RAW files. A few used other points in the image as indicated, and in some cases where the colors were so monochromatic that the balance went off the scale, a custom color balance was used where I indicate the temperature in Kelvin (the range is 2000 K to 50,000 K in DxO PL5) and the Tint value (the range is -200 to +200 of the DxO PL5 tint slider).
Reference image from stock (unconverted) M200
1. Stock M200: No filter, daylight WB (reference image)
Images with full-spectrum M200
2. Full-spectrum M200: Spencer Visible+H-alpha, concrete WB
3. Full-spectrum M200: Tiffen Hot Mirror, concrete WB
4. Full-spectrum M200: No filter (full spectrum), concrete WB
5. Full-spectrum M200: K&F Concept Light Pollution, concrete WB
6. Full-spectrum M200: Hoya FL-D, concrete WB
7. Full-spectrum M200: Hoya Green X1, concrete WB
8. Full-spectrum M200: Hoya Green X1 & Hoya FL-D, concrete WB
9. Full-spectrum M200: Tiffen Blue #47, concrete WB
10. Full-spectrum M200: BG3 Violet/Blue/IR, concrete WB
11. Full-spectrum M200: BG3 Violet/Blue/IR, concrete WB, 15 degree hue shift
12. Full-spectrum M200: Tiffen Yellow #15, concrete WB
13. Full-spectrum M200: Tiffen Yellow #15, concrete WB, 180 degree hue shift
14. Full-spectrum M200: Tiffen Yellow #15, concrete WB, 195 degree hue shift
15. Full-spectrum M200: Spencer 590 nm, concrete WB
16. Full-spectrum M200: Spencer 590 nm, concrete WB, 180 degree hue shift
17. Full-spectrum M200: Hoya Red #25A, concrete WB
18. Full-spectrum M200: Hoya Red #25A, concrete WB, 180 degree hue shift
19. Full-spectrum M200: Hoya Red #25A, concrete WB, 165 degree hue shift
20. Full-spectrum M200: Hoya R72, foliage WB
21. Full-spectrum M200: Hoya R72, foliage WB, 180 degree hue shift, saturation increased
22. Full-spectrum M200: IR 850 nm, concrete WB
23. Full-spectrum M200: IR 950 nm, concrete WB
Full spectrum M200 with multiple stacked filter combinations
24. Full-spectrum M200: BG3 Violet/Blue/IR & Tiffen Hot Mirror, house column WB
25. Full-spectrum M200: BG3 Violet/Blue/IR & Tiffen Hot Mirror, house column WB, in B&W
26. Full-spectrum M200: Hoya Red #25A & Spencer Visible+Ha, Custom WB 2000K, Tint -200
27. Full-spectrum M200: Hoya Red #25A & Spencer Visible+Ha, Custom WB 2000K, Tint -200, in B&W
28. Full-spectrum M200: Hoya Red #25A & Tiffen Hot Mirror, Custom WB 2000K, Tint -200
29. Full-spectrum M200: Hoya Red #25A & Tiffen Hot Mirror, Custom WB 2000K, Tint -200, in B&W
Stock (unconverted) M200 images with filters
30. Stock M200: Hoya FL-D, concrete WB
31. Stock M200: Hoya Green X1, concrete WB
32. Stock M200: Hoya Green X1 & Hoya FL-D, concrete WB
33. Stock M200: Tiffen Blue #47, Custom WB 50,000K Tint -100
34. Stock M200: Tiffen Blue #47, Custom WB 50,000K Tint -100, in B&W
35. Stock M200: BG3 Violet/Blue/IR, Custom WB 50,000K Tint -100
36. Stock M200: BG3 Violet/Blue/IR, Custom WB 50,000K Tint -100, in B&W
37. Stock M200: Tiffen Yellow #15, concrete WB
38. Stock M200: Spencer 590 nm, Custom WB 2000K Tint -100
39. Stock M200: Spencer 590 nm, Custom WB 2000K Tint -100, in B&W
40. Stock M200: Vivitar Red #25A, Custom WB 2000K Tint -100
41. Stock M200: Vivitar Red #25A, Custom WB 2000K Tint -100, in B&W
'Real' IR images with a stock (unconverted) M200!
42. Stock M200: Hoya R72, concrete WB
43. Stock M200: Hoya R72, foliage WB, 180 degree hue shift
44. Stock M200: IR 850 nm, Custom WB 4000k Tint -200
45. Stock M200: IR 850 nm, Custom WB 4000k Tint -200, 165 degree hue shift, reduce magenta saturation
My personal takeaways:
- All filters were of very good quality. I did not see degradation of the images from the filters, even the ‘cheap’ Chinese filters
- The Canon EF-M 22mm f2 lens is almost free of a hot spot at f8, however one can be seen in image #23 in the deepest 950 nm IR filter on the full-spectrum M200 image
- The ‘cheap’ Chinese ZB2/BG3 filter for $16 off eBay was very similar to the more expensive Tiffen #47 filter. Both are dual-band filters similar to the Kolari Vision ‘IR Chrome’, passing visible blue light plus infrared longer than about 700 nm. These filters are becoming my favorites as they give lovely false-color images straight out of camera with little to no post-processing, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts. It took less than 3 weeks for me to receive the ZB2 filter from China.
- The Tiffen Yellow #15, Spencer 590 nm (orange), and Hoya Red #25A filters all gave very similar images, they could be substituted for one another with just a slight global hue shift needed to make their images similar.
- The Hoya Green X1 filter passes a little IR, changing the foliage to be slightly reddish on the full-spectrum M200
- The Spencer Camera Visible + H-alpha filter is a close approximation for the camera’s original ‘hot mirror’ filter that was removed in the full-spectrum conversion. With a custom white balance, its images look very much like the unconverted camera’s images, with slightly richer looking foliage
- The Tiffen Hot Mirror filter does not cut near-IR nearly as well as the Spencer camera Visible + H-alpha filter, and is not a close approximation for the camera’s factory hot mirror filter. I was unable to White balance images using this filter to look like normal images from the unconverted camera — foliage always has an odd reddish appearance. This filter may be useful for astrophotography, however
The BIG surprise, and discovery, for me was the last image #45: unconverted (stock) M200 camera when used with the eBay 850 nm deep IR longpass filter — this combination unexpectedly gave beautiful false-color infrared images!! I have not read of anyone getting false-color infrared images from an unconverted camera, or trying an 850 nm filter with an unconverted camera.
The images coming out of that combo were very similar to images from the full spectrum camera with the Hoya Red #25A filter - both requiring almost identical processing with a 165 degree hue shift to give images with golden foliage and blue skies.
What is going on there? An 850 nm filter is universally known for being a deep infrared filter that gives only monochomatic or B&W results!
What must be happening is that the combination of that 850 nm filter with the unconverted camera’s factory IR cut filters is creating a result that is very much like the Hoya R25A filter, passing IR fairly evenly from about 620 nm to ~1000 nm. I don’t know if it’s that particular 850 nm filter that gives this result, or if other brands of 850 nm filters would behave similarly.
I also tested an unconverted Canon M6ii with the 850 nm filter, and got nearly identical false-color IR images. I will post more about this in a later post.
So Canon ‘M’ owners can buy that $15 850 nm IR filter off eBay, and take false-color infrared images with long time exposures without converting their camera to infrared! Long exposures of 2 to 30 seconds are required, similar to shooting R72 IR filter images with an unconverted camera, so the image quality is not going to be as good as IR images from an IR-converted camera.
This discovery allows Canon M owners to experiment with false-color IR without spending $275 for an IR conversion, with the risk of converting the camera and not being able to easily use it for standard photography.
