Photo of the Week 2017-02-13

With a camera newly converted for infrared photography, I set out in the freshly fallen snow on a favourite trail ...

winter wonderland

Back at the cottage after a refreshing hike with 30cm of snow blanketing everything around, I sat down at the computer to process some very red & white exposures and this was one result. 

I was uncertain of exactly what to expect when shooting infrared (IR) for colour images in winter, even more so with the conversion I had selected for this particular camera (more on that in a moment). In the past when I've shot IR it was with the intention of creating final B&W images during spring and summer where the result renders greenery (trees & grass) as white, producing a very surreal look.

For this outing, my goal was to shoot and process for false colour images knowing that there would be a learning curve with post processing. Kolari Vision made getting started easy thanks to their free false colour actions for Photoshop. Fast forward a couple of hours, some red & blue channel swapping, a little NIK Color Efex Pro 4 and you have the surreal image above where the evergreens are turned a light red.

Background (a bit of the geek stuff, for those interested and wit a little understanding of IR photography):

I had a couple of EOS M mirrorless bodies that I've been wanting to convert to IR. Their compact size makes them ideal to take along in addition to my regular gear. They allow me to use the native EOS EF-M lenses, 11-22, 22 & 18-55 or I can pack the EF - EF-M adapter (also compact) and use any of my regular Canon and Sigma glass. Either way, there won't be a lot of extra weight or volume to pack and carry along.

There are benefits to converting mirrorless cameras over DSLRs for IR. Mirrorless cameras that focus directly off the sensor eliminate the need to have a DSLR camera's separate auto-focus system calibrated to IR wavelength and ... since mirrorless cameras use either live view or electronic viewfinders reading right from the sensor, you see exactly the exposure and colour rendition that will be recorded, rather than having to look through a darkened viewfinder and guess at the result.

For this first camera conversion I used Kolari Vision because they offer a "two-spectrum" conversion, leaving the image sensor sensitive to both infrared & visible light. This allows for shooting handheld with a variety of IR filters to achieve different results. Along with the conversion, I ordered 590nm & 850nm filters for false colour and high contrast B&W images respectively. This will give me a good start and I can always get additional filters and/or convert the second body once I have more experience working in IR.

For those who need to know more about IR photography and camera comversions, you can read about the "two-spectrum" conversion on Kolari Vision's website here or delve more deeply into the realm if IR photography from their main page.

I can see that this is going to be fun ...

DJE