i'm looking for a person who's shooting IR with a modified Canon 350D

phuong

.. to seek advises. because i'm considering purchasing a 350D and have it modified to IR-only. the reason is simple: all of the cameras i'm currently using for colored IR photography have at least one drawback, and i'm trying to solve all of them at once.
my only concern is if the IR-modified 350D will produce nice colored images.

here's the quote from the group who's performiing the conversion ( www.maxmax.com ): "An IR-Only camera will only see IR from 715nm through 1200nm. The IR-Only camera has an internal 715nm IR filter with an antiflection coating. The 715nm filter performs similarly to the Hoya RM72 and Wratten 89B."

from my understanding, witht he cut-off point of 715nm, there's plenty of visible light going through the sensor making it possible to do color infrared. however i've rarely seen any one who shoots with a modified 350D posted a nice color IR image. by "nice" i mean "standard blue/cyan sky and ghostly white or slightly red foliages". it's probably due to their lack of Photoshop skills. no offense, by the way. anyone who shoots IR with a Canon DSLR knows it's very difficult to process the raw image into a nice colored one, so BW is often chosen.

to make sure on this point, i'll be very appreciate anyone who has this IR-modified 350D to give me a sample of a RAW file so i can try to process it to see if it works. i know i'm asking too much, though..

phuong

by the way, i am currently shooting IR with 4 unmodified cameras: the Canon 20D, the Konica Minolta Dimage 7, the Sony V3 and the Sony F828. all of them are capable of producing color infrared images. the only exception is the F828's nightshot mode (it can produce colored image in normal mode).

i started experiencing IR photography with the 20D. many of you probably already know it takes very long exposures even at very high ISO. a typical exposure on a bright sunny day is 15-20 seconds at f/4 at ISO800.
after awhile, tired of this ridiculously long exposure, i purchased the Dimage 7. it produces very nice color images. also i can take photos at much faster speed: typically 1/30 at f/3.5 at ISO100. but its major drawback is a hotspot. so when taking photos with this cam, i usually try to either "hide" the hotspot by placing it over the bright area of the image, or keep it as a feature of my image, or take a few hours to perfectly fixing it in Photoshop.
so, again, tired of the hotspot problem, i purchased a Sony V3 and a Sony F828 hoping their nightshot features will help. turns out, in the the night shooting mode, the camera always open as wide as possible and the fastest exposure is limited to 1/30 second (this is probably to preven people to spoil this feature, like, shooting see-through clothings pictures). therefore, i'm stuck again with slow exposures again. on the other hand, while the V3 gives really really nice colored IR photos when shooting in nightshot mode, the F828 just can't. i think it's probably because of its RGBE pattern sensor, but i'm not sure.

all these problems can be solved at once, if i'm getting a IR modified 350D (and of course if it's capable of producing "nice" colored IR images). so, again, if anyone of you (or if you know who) is shooitng with a modified 350D, can you kindly engough to share your experiences with me?

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my latest IR photos can be seen here http://pbase.com/phuongtk

Andy

Hi Phuong,

I never get any good color infrareds with any of the modded cameras I've used: 300D, 350D, 20D, 5D. The best for color infrareds has been the Sony 717, un-modded.

http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/1077118


Hope this helps,

phuong

thanks Andy. but the "colored" photo you show me is still a mono one, sepia tinted. color IR is very different from mono IR in a way that, it takes time to adjust color balance and shift them to some pleasing ones, close enough to "real" or normal photos, but still keeping its basic IR characteristics. and also because different sensors have different sensitivity curves to IR light, they produce different results and require different post processing techniques as well.
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this is what i'm after: a heavily red tinted raw image, but has a slight hint of blues/cyans (if the raw file from the modded 300D/350D does have this characteristic please let me know)

let's take a look at the foliages and the cans in this image taken with the V3. they have blue tints in them, although not very obvious.


after adjusting in raw processor it'll look similar to this


and so when brought into Photoshop for further processing it'll at least have a look like this


or like this


unlike mono IR, there're just many possibilities in color IR. to me it's a joy to play & experiment with them untill i find an approprite look for a specific image.
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Andy, since you did shot with the 300D, i hope you keep some raw files. so perhaps you may let me glance at one of them? (it doesnt have to be well composed or a dramatic shot. just the basic elements of IR in it: foliages and sky, maybe some clouds. even if it's very blurry it's fine for me. all i need to know is how the colors will turn out to be)

Andy

phuong wrote:

thanks Andy. but the "colored" photo you show me is still a mono one

Uh, I *never* said I had a color IR photo for you. In fact, the link I gave was just for additional info, it's short review of the maxmax modded 300D.

I don't do color IR.

phuong

i see. thanks Andy!