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If you have ever experimented with photography and especially infrared photography you know that not to many years ago this was quite a hassle. Not only would you need special films that needed the correct handling but you would also have the trouble of black and white processing and the inability to evaluate your result until you had used of the whole roll of film and you had the pictures printed. What a waste of time and money.

Luckily this is now all changed due to the invention of the digital camera and thereby the ability to take a digital photography. Now you are able to take digital infrared photos whenever and where ever you please. These can even be mixed with normal photos and by looking at the LCD screen on the camera you are able to instantly see the result and adjust your settings to get the picture just right.

The result of your infrared pictures will naturally depend on how your camera sensor array reacts to the infrared and secondly it will depend on the filter you are using and how it reacts to the far end of the visible spectrum

Are infrared pictures that different?

When you first look at a monochrome photo that is taken with an infrared camera filter it might look almost identical to every other black and white picture. If you look closely you will begin to see the differences such as the objects which are bright in the visible light will appear dark while some of the *things* that are normally dark will be given a fair glowing light.

The reason for this is simple and can be explained if you look at a graph showing the fraction of light reflected off the different materials at the different wavelengths. The actual height of the curves will show how bright every material is in a visible light while another curve will tell you how bright they are in infrared.

The biggest difference between the infrared spectrum and the visible spectrum is in the case of foliage. Foliage becomes very bright in infrared as you will be able to see if you have ever taken infrared pictures before.

Pictures that are in infrared will show quite an unusual tonality that is different than that which we are used to seeing. This effect will make them very pleasing to the eye in most (if not all) cases. This will naturally be a debate about taste that we do not need to enter into.

The digital camera

To start with you will need a digital camera. Most digital cameras today have a special infrared filter blocking in front of the light sensitive CCD array as the infrared light degrades the visible light color rendition. Depending on the camera there is a difference in how much of infrared the filter will let through.

Some of the early models, like the venerable Olympus C-2000Z/C-2020Z and Nikon 950 are very permissive here, while the more recent models let just enough of infrared light through to be suitable for infrared photography. While most of these require a really long exposure they also offer a solution for a workaround. You must remember that the camera makers do everything they can to stop the infrared from reaching the sensor.