Infrared Photography Experiment

8. Infrared film, exposed between dawn and sunrise in high, dry locales will frequently objectify invisible objects of various kinds living in and passing through the atmosphere.

Source: The Voices at Van Tassel's

Has anyone here performed photography experiments using infrared film in these locales?

If so, what if anything anomalous was captured on film?

Infrared photography is quite a common practise among amateur/hobbyist photographers. It's quite hard to do with digital, but with film all you need to by is an IR filter, which prevents the passing of visible light, and some IR film. All up the equipment is pretty cheap, as you can get the actual camera body for $20 if you were so inclined, due to film now being an almost forgotten medium for the vast majority modern-day shooters.

I don't know of any IR photos being taken in paranormal hot spots, but there are many forums you can ask around that will probably have someone in the know. Also of interest is that our eyes can actually see in the IR part of the spectrum, it's just that when there is the most IR radiation (at noon) there is also the most amount of visible light. What you can do is wait for a pitch black night, then switch on a few IR floodlights. There is also a special sort of plastic-like material that you can buy that only allows the passing of IR radiation.

Cool mate. I was wondering if anyone followed the guy's directions specifically and captured whatever it is he thinks you'll capture. It's a simple direct experiment reproducible and that would rapidly either give someone reproducible photographic data or debunk the guy for all but the looniest of the loons.

Digital infrared is easy, just take out the hot mirror filter from the front of the sensor and replace it with a clear one. Then the camera will be sensitive to UV, IR and visible light. You can limit the ones you want out with filters.

Indeed, PsykoOps, CCD and CMOS sensors are very sensitive to IR light, which is why they have very thin, very delicate IR filters in front of the sensor, which most users I'm sure wouldn't want to remove from their $2, 000+ DSLR for fear of damaging the sensor itself, which is very very easy to do, considering what a delicate piece of electronics it is.
Your best bet to to DSLR IR photography would be to grab an old Canon 1D, or the Nikon equivalent, and cannabilize that.

Well it's piqued my interest enough! I am going to throw a little money at it and get some camerapeople to help me out, get some footage and stills and see what we can find. If there is any result either way I will post it here.

It is very, very simple to convert webcams to work in infrared light, not mention how cheap they come this days. Here's a nice webpage about it. Once I saw this, it took just a few minutes to convert my old Phillips webcam into IR capable one, as its objective is fully removed by simply unscrewing it and the IR filter comes off easily, too.

Who'd say Coke is transparent for infrared light...

reply to post by nekitamo


Yes I've seen the same webpage. Classic how to page.

It was something along those lines I was thinking of, remote cameras with IR.

Originally posted by PsykoOps
Digital infrared is easy, just take out the hot mirror filter from the front of the sensor and replace it with a clear one. Then the camera will be sensitive to UV, IR and visible light. You can limit the ones you want out with filters.

I own an old vhs cam recorder that uses full size vhs tapes and it still works great and have been thinking of taking it out of mothballs a National MC5
can this cam film ir straight out of the box or do i need to change lenses and what else can be done with it?

[edit on 10-2-2008 by ST SIR 86]

I'm not familiar with such equipment, check google and ask from experts if you find them. I doubt it, maybe only way would be to add IR-light amplifier on it and that would cost alot.

i asked here because all i can get from google is them passing the buck onto
ebay... all that google is , its a buyers guide to the internet nothing else...all google does is try and sell you something!

If your location has video repair shops or such they might have people working who were around in the glory days of VHS. Also video workshops, schools and such might have people who know VHS.

Originally posted by PsykoOps
If your location has video repair shops or such they might have people working who were around in the glory days of VHS. Also video workshops, schools and such might have people who know VHS.

good thinking.
come to think of it i have such a shop about 10 min drive down the road
ill post any answers that i find out

Cool! The IR photography aspect of paranormal and UFO encounters comes up quite often. I never got a chance to do much of this type stuff so I am going to take a look into it now.

Long time lurker, first time poster since I finally have something I have at least a little expertise in.

I've been experimenting with digital IR photography the last 6 months or so. I use a Nikon D40x with a Hoya RM-72 that only passes light above 720nm. So far the results are interesting in a 'hey that looks neat' way but taking anything worthwhile for anomolies is going to be extremely difficult.

The lens is senstive to IR above 720nm meaning the lens itself visually is completely black. This is seat of the pants shooting, the viewfinder is rendered useless without any visual light. Also, the length of exposure goes way up with the filter and the pics can be exceptionally grainy. This also makes anything that moves become a major blur so action of any sort isn't going to show up as anything but a line of light. On top of that, getting the white balance is difficult (at least on this camera) making for original pics that are a bubble gum pink color and they have to be heavily photoshopped back into something useful which I would assume increases the probability or errors and other issues with authenticity.

I've not shot with IR film but I have seen a bunch of it and they do tend to mirror the same characteristics of the digital IR (gainy, movement issues etc). I'm not saying what the OP asks can't be done, it's just going to be a lot more difficult than regular film or digital.

Some examples from my shoots:

IR before processing:


IR post processing with false color info added back in:


And in B&W:

That's exactly why replacing the hot mirror is a better option. The process of taking pictures remains normal so you can use viewfinder etc.
For the whitebalance thing, shoot raw images and then adjust the WB manually in post processing. There are pages though which tell you what is the best setting for WB in IR photography but cant remember url's atm. and firefox murdered all my bookmarks

Originally posted by PsykoOps
That's exactly why replacing the hot mirror is a better option. The process of taking pictures remains normal so you can use viewfinder etc.
For the whitebalance thing, shoot raw images and then adjust the WB manually in post processing. There are pages though which tell you what is the best setting for WB in IR photography but cant remember url's atm. and firefox murdered all my bookmarks

Replacing the hot mirror is pretty expensive (at least to me). Life Pixel does it for around $350 plus another $125 for a custom lens setup if you aren't using the 18-70DX lens. I guess if you're *really* into it, it's a great option but for $40 for a filter, I'm pretty happy snapping and praying. Plus, you're talking about making the camera a dedicated IR camera and with the cost of the camera were almost in the $1k range.

I do the whitebalance in Photoshop after the fact but the problem is that if you don't set the whitebalance in the camera before the shot, the contrast range of the photo is severly limited (and this is where replacing the hot mirror really makes sense as you'll have excellent range in the photos). When you swap the red and blue channels in post processing there's just not enough info there for them to swap successfully and you end of having to dump it to B&W.

I've been though a bunch of tutorials with limited success because the Nikon D40 just wont set a white balance with the IR filter on. Admittedly the D40 isn't the best choice for IR cameras, but its serviceable. Any advice from someone more knowledgeable is definately appreciated! The best info I've found so far is on clubsnap.org forums, they've really got some great info if anyone is interested in starting to shoot IR.