Infrared with a DSLR

Here's an overview of Michael Reichmann workflow library made on Lightroom 3. Do visit his page for tutorial and much more. Experienced over 40years as a professional photographer, he's also an avid lover of landscape photography and on his site, he also writes and discuss on the technical aspects of choosing the right tool and compare the use of 20D and 1Ds Mk II as a shooting companion for infrared shooting. Look no further, have a look.

Answering to all the what, when, where and how..

Infrared Shooting


Usually a landscape photographer work during special hours, the so called blue hours. In the morning or in the evening when the sun beams draw amazing long shadows which add the volume to the shot. And it's very uneasy to shoot during the daytime. When the sun is exactly above you, it's lighting is very contrasting - so you will lose information in lights and shadows but if you are the happy owner of IR filter, you definitely won't be bored in the afternoon, because the bright sunlight is the main source of IR rays.


Getting Started
  • You don't need to darken the sky with ND Filter because it will be almost black.
  • The textures will be revealed nicely.
  • Foliage, illuminated brightly, will be very spectacular.

Tips for DSLR camera users
  1. Unlike usual digital cameras, DSLR have some problems with sighting and sharpening, as IR filters are non-transparent. It's rather troublesome to do focusing with the IR filter. 
  2. Set your camera on a tripod, do sighting and framing. Then screw on the IR filter and, finally, shoot.
  3. Don't rely 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. 
  4. Increase (DOF) with the aperture value close to f/18-22. 
  5. There is an IR focusing mark on some lenses. Use it, matching it with the distance scale.
  6. You should also cover the viewfinder to avoid the additional overexposure.
  7.  Take several shots with exposure bias value in 1-2 EV, controlling the histogram (especially in the lights). 
  8. Pay attention to the White Balance if you aren't shootin in RAW. Ideal WB will be set on the illuminated leaves, as it will be much easier to get an appropriate result in infrared post processing.
Written by Shot Addict

Shooting Technique

This is the "general-purpose" category, where photographer might be using the camera handheld, on a tripod, or whatever. Landscape photography, weddings, etc also fall into this category.
Useful features include:

  1. Electronic viewfinder (not LCD) 
  2. With infrared imagery it's very useful to see the IR image instead of the visible-light image shown through an optical viewfinder. Being able to put your eye up to the viewfinder has advantages of visibility and camera stability. 
  3. While eye-level electronic viewfinders do show less detail than the optical viewfinder of an SLR or rangefinder, the benefit of seeing the infrared image outweighs those drawbacks.
  4. "Shooting priority". Cameras with this will switch to record mode when the shutter button is half-pressed, no matter what the camera was doing beforehand (e.g. reviewing photos or in a menu).
  5. Availability of a tripod quick-release system is also important to many photographers. 
Written by Khrogomery

Knowing The Basics


One of the most charming contrasting color effects you can get in photography is by using infrared. An easy way to understand near-infrared light is to think of it as the color of the rainbow next to red, a color that is invisible to the human eye. But near-infrared is not the same as thermal imaging.
Because everyday objects reflect infrared in proportions that differ sharply from that of visible light, the tonal relationships are wildly unexpected. Such near-infrared techniques used in photography give subjects an exotic, antique look. Green vegetation becomes white, whereas human skin becomes pale and ghostly. The resulting images look alien.
Digital cameras use CCD and other similar sensors to capture infrared images. Although all digital cameras available on the market are sensitive to infrared light, they are equipped with infrared-blocking filters. The main reason for this is that consumer cameras are designed to capture visible light. But sometimes these filters are used together, giving very interesting in-camera effects like false color, wood effects etc.
To start with infrared photography, all you need to have is
  1. A digital camera that is sensitive to infrared light.
  2. A visible-light blocking filter (e.g. a Wratten 89B filter)
  3. Image-editing software, such as Photoshop.
Near-infrared images straight out of the camera do not always look good and are usually not as dramatic and beautiful as normally captured images. Hence, a lot of post-processing is done to enhance these images. Some techniques used in post-processing are equalization, focus shift, small aperture, light leaks, digital false color, halo, etc.
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