I’m using a Leica M8.2 for IR photography, with a deep red filter (I can still see through the filter, so it’s probably not the proper filter I need.
I bring up the image in Raw Therapee, and adjust the Channel Mixer as I was told to do: For Red and Blue, what used to be 100 I changed to 0, and what used to be 0 I changed to be 100.
After this I use the eyedropper tool, to adjust the white balance for WHITE.
End result is the trees and shrubbery turn to a color between “golden” and “pink”, but the rest of the image still seems sort of normal/neutral. It was a dull day, but there s no other color in my image.
Should the sky be coming out a deep blue, with fluffy white clouds?
I think I’m missing something - any additional instructions I can follow?
I attached a typical image - looks too dull, no colors, no nothing. I know there’s a lot I do know how to do, but I don’t know how to bring out more color.
Thank you!! I waited for most of the day for the sun to come back out, but it remained cloudy, and I figured I should try it anyway, for a starting point.
Setting the focus mark on the lens to the f/5.6 depth of field mark on the body (instead of infinity) seems to be a good way to get a sharp focus.
If tomorrow is a bright sunny day, I’ll try again. The sky was gray today, so I got gray in my photo. I hope I can do better.
I don’t know what value the filter is - I was reading about different filters and the effects I can achieve. I believe this lens takes a 39mm filter size, so once I know what filters to get, I’ll place the order. Any other suggestions?
Here’s one more image - the sun was a little brighter, but not what I would call bright sunlight. I tried adjusting the image in Raw Therapee to make it a little closer to what I’d like, but I need to get some blue color into the sky.
If you put an example in Play Raw (has to be CC licensed I believe), then I’m sure one of the RT wizards would edit it and put their pp3 file up so you could have a look
Problem is that a normal camera will have a “hot mirror” filter in front of the sensor. That is a pass filter that will cut of UV and IR. Best is a converted camera where the filter got removed. This said, I would not dare to try that on a Leica. I did on a Sony A5000, they are cheap and easy to convert.
One more thing, with IR you need light, it works best on sunny days.
That is the reason I am using my Leica M8 (actually, M8.2) as the designers did not include that filter in the camera design. Their mistake, and one of the flaws in the M8 Leica’s, is my good luck charm - the camera comes from the factory all set to be used for infrared photography. Leica then had to develop IR cut filters for most people - they fixed in on their M9 and M10 cameras - but for me, I’m all set.
I did find a source of affordable used cameras with the IR filter removed, but I can do all my experimenting for now with my M8.2 camera. …but having said that, I know I need to buy some better IR filters. I hope to do that on Monday, based on what I read in the link I posted up above.
I will check this out later today. Not sure what you mean by “CC licensed”?? Also, I woke up to find a beautiful sunny day, with blue skies. I think I read that IR photography works best in the middle of the day, not early or late, so I’ll continually take new photos during the day, hoping to get one at the “best” time for IR.
The above is based on what I have read in the past few weeks. I guess I’ll find out today, if the weather doesn’t go bad.
One more question - I see “Darktable” mentioned in several places. I installed it some time ago. What is the connection between “DarkTable” and “Raw Therapee”? Is it that both are Open Source? …and while I’m asking, how do I upgrade to the latest version?
It’s a beautiful sunny day outside, perfect for testing. When I finish here, I’ll walk around and capture some scenes that might look interesting in IR.
About your photos - the top photo looks like it is all out of focus? Not sure why.
The next photo looks similar to what my images look like, with no correction.
The bottom photo shows the trees with no color - maybe that’s what an R-72 filter does?
You wrote “white point on grass, inverted lab tone curves”. I would love to see what that photo looks like with the cloud being used for white balance. Maybe color would then show up in the trees? The grass might change to yellow, or something similar.
Not sure how I can “invert lab tone curves”? When you get time, can you please explain how this is done?
What I’ve been doing is the “channel mixing”, then setting the white balance, and then adding some contrast, etc., as I would normally do. Maybe that’s the same as inverting the lab tone curves?
Which of these filters and conditions (if any) replicate what you have done?
I just took a series of shots to demonstrate the color effect. So, please don’t care about the focus.
With an IR filter you basically lose all normal color information and get Just a monochrome IR image. Most filters will allow some shorter wavelengths to pass. You can use these to get a blue sky, when you invert the the color curves.
If you do not set the whitepoint to the red areas, everything will appear more reddish.
There are different ways to achieve this. I am experimenting at the moment with the new channel mixer. My old way was to use the legacy tone curve module and set it to “lab, independent channels” Then invert both Lab color curves.
For me, using Raw Therapee, and the eyedropper clicking on something I know is white (and doing this as the final step) got the results posted above. All the red mist was gone.
Hopefully I’ll have better photos to post later today.
To allow people to edit the photos any posted images in the play raw section of this site need to have a licence that enables redistribution. There are various version like non-commercial etc… but it is worth noting that you probably don’t want to give out your best photo for free distribution round the interwebs.
I ingest my photos from my camera card to my iMac using Photo Mechanic. Can you please suggest the specific wording that needs to go into “testing images” which would satisfy this requirement?
I do understand what you mean, and what I will need to do - for images being posted to the “raw section” of this site, I need to add something that allows people to manipulate and redistribute my image(s).
The purpose in posting the image, and allowing others to work with it, is so I can learn how to do it better myself, and I assume some people would want to show me.
Bottom line, what specific field(s) in the EXIF data / Metadata need to be modified, and what is the desired wording?
There were many different film types that were sensitive to IR and visible light. In digital photography you would have to mimic that with filters. However, digital cameres have an inbuild IR filter that make this difficult.
Nothing that complex, photo goes in first the license below. About the Play Raw category details what you are getting into and Licenses List | Creative Commons has all the licences. Realistically EXIF data can be stripped from RAW and every method of copyright protection can be circumvented by a screen shot.
