Last Updated on April 20, 2020
Infrared photography has many applications, such as cosmic photos, recovering texts of water damaged documents, quality checks for hidden material flaws, surveillance and public safety, or aesthetic purposes.
You would imagine that you need special equipment to take infrared photos. Well, for the “far” infrared spectrum (thermal light), indeed, you need it. But for the “near” infrared, all you need is a digital camera that doesn’t have a filter that blocks infrared light, and an infrared filter.
How to test your camera for IR capability: check if it can see beams emitted from a common infrared remote control (point it towards your camera and press any button). The beams should appear white in the LCD screen.
If your camera does not have an LCD screen, take a picture of the remote control while pressing one of its buttons. In this photo you should see the beam, as illustrated:
Otherwise, it means that your camera has the IR blocking filter. Probably it can be removed, but I would not suggest you do that, because it may void your warranty, or you may never manage to put the camera together and functioning again.
If your camera passed the test, and you are looking forward to see your future IR pictures, take a look at these examples of infrared photography.
I checked my camera and it can take infrared photos. Thank you for the tip.
So my camera does have IR functionality. Now, what fun stuff can I actually do with it?
Now you need an IR filter, Hoya R72. You can see an example of IR photo here: http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=007kni
Hello! Thank you for your site. I have found here much useful information.
I’ll be back.
Thanks for stopping by. You are welcome any time.
I tried this with a Canon 300D (aka Rebel XT/Kiss) and it did not see the infrared beam from any of my remote controls. I doesn’t have a live view so it makes the task more difficult.
Infra red camera is very useful if you want to take picture of an energy that can be capture by conventional camera. let say you want to take a picture of a ghost.
Now thanks to your post, I finally able to know the importance of this infrared feature. Thanks for posting it!
Just checked my 450d, and it’s not working for infa red photos… Was hoping to get some deep space photographs, damn!
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I have a plan to make my camera can take pictures of ghosts …
possible by this plan I can come true …
thank’s for great info..
That’s a great advice!I will check it myself!
Take picture of an energy that can be capture by conventional camera
Unlike usual digital cameras, DSLR cameras have some problems with sighting and sharpening, as IR filters are non-transparent. It’s rather troublesome to do focusing with the IR filter.
Set your camera on a tripod , do sighting and framing. Then screw on the IR filter and, finally, shoot.
Don’t relay on autofocus. It takes into account only rays of visible spectrum, while IR rays are refracted differently. So you may focus with the help of a windowed distance scale, pointing the focus a bit closer than a real distance to the shooting object.
Increase Depth Of Field (DOF) with the aperture value close to f/18-22.
There is an IR focusing mark on some lenses. Use it, matching it with the distance scale.
You should also cover the viewfinder to avoid the additional overexposure.
Take several shots with exposure bias value in 1-2 eV, controlling the histogram (especially in the lights).
Pay attention to the white balance , if you aren’t shootin in RAW (you can easily change white balance preferences in any of RAW-converters). Ideal WB will be set on the illuminated leaves, as it will be much easier to get an appropriate result in infrared post processing, which is the topic of our next article .