[matthew]

I bought a new camera. And yes, Pavel, it's a superzoom.



It's a nice little camera, packing a 28-500mm-e zoom. And it has a secret.



That's my new-used Panasonic FZ18, a Hoya R72 IR filter, and the tail light for a bike I don't own.



This camera and I are still getting to know each other. It's had an IR conversion done, and it's nearly my first time using a camera that shoots in infrared without losing ten or fifteen stops of light. One of the immediate differences is that instead of shooting with everything red, I can easily do a custom white balance. I also suspect that this is an "enhanced colour" filter that lets some additional light through. This is what the above photo looked like in the initial raw conversion:



The ability to shoot "colour" infrared is a new and unusual thing, to say the least. There's no way to predict what 'colours' will translate into a bright purple—I can photograph someone wearing a black shirt, black jacket, and black bag, and have one come out white, one blue, and the other black. And sometime the white balance can be tweaked so that there's no difference at all, like the photo below, which could almost have been taken with any of my other cameras.



But the reality of being able to shoot in IR, either exclusively or inclusively, at normal shutter speeds has been remarkable. Action shots are possible, within the constraints of a P&S camera, as is night photography even without a tripod.



The lens is very good, with no fogging or other IR-related problems that even excellent glass can fall victim to. But not everything is perfect. For one thing, a good IR camera is almost by definition a P&S, with all of the performance and design issues that involves. For example, the FZ18 has a dedicated button to change from Auto to Manual Focus, but changing the ISO requires between four to seven button-pushes to delve into the menus. And after getting used to DSLRs, the P&S image quality is a bit of a teddy bear—soft and fuzzy. But some of that may also be due to the IR conversion.



Dust! At some point during the conversion, something unhappy happened to this camera. This photo, uncropped and taken at the full lens extension, has had a lot of work done to stretch the levels. (It was shot during daylight, and hand-held.) These spots don't normally show, and none of these sample photos have been de-spotted, although they're easily visible against an even tone. But, for a camera that cost only a little more than my Lensbaby, I really can't complain.