Photo of the Week 2014-12-01

It was BLAH weather at the cottage this weekend and I needed something a little different to stir the creative juices. I've been thinking about converting my Canon EOS M for infrared (IR) photography and decided to give it a whirl with some IR filters to see how it handled. Dull overcast days are not a good time to work with IR but hey, I needed to play around.

There's this little scene at the side of our cottage road that speaks to me every time I pass by so I decided to set up there for this little trial.

The first thing I experienced was extraordinarily long shutter speeds. I already know that using a non-converted camera with IR filters on the lens will require long shutter speeds in the range of 15-30 seconds to overcome the internal IR cut filter. But wow ... with the dull, overcast day and starting first with an 850nm filter I was 4 minutes f/5.6 ISO 3200 and I found lack sharpness to be an issue. I think it was mostly a focus shift issue and not being able to determine how much focus shift adjustment was required or at least not taking enough 4 minute exposures to get the right focus by trial and error. Now the 850nm filter really blocks a lot of light only allowing the longer wavelength IR to pass so I dropped down to the 720nm filter which would let in a smidgen more light overall.

With the 720nm filter, I still required a 2 minute exposure with f/5.6, ISO 1600 so the blustery wind played havoc with my subject, moving the spruce and cedar branches causing them to blur, but it can be an nice effect so I carried on and ended up with something interesting ... I think.

I R Spruce Out of Rock

Working with an IR converted camera can be a lot more convenient depending on the particular camera type and features. A converted EOS M will show me the IR image on it's live view screen and should be able to focus without a recalibration since it uses the actual imaging sensor to focus, unlike my DSLR's which use a separate focus sensor. The "M" is also a nice compact package that will be easy to include in my kit along with the adapter that allows it to use all my EF mount lenses :-D

Now the only questions are which IR range to I get it converted to and which conversion service do I use .... hmmmmmm

DJE