[Keith Alan]

A neat little Lutheran Church in the Texas Hill Country town of Boerne.


(Sony F717, 760nm IR filter, ND4 + circular polarizer filters)

[Irma]

This is a beauty Keith. I like it a lot!!

Sorry my ignorance but how you can switch all those filters in your lens?
Are you working with the cokin system?
Do you see any difference with a camera repaired to take IR images, or use filters?

I would be very happy to hear your opinion about this.

I am planning to give my FZ20 repaired to take my IR pictures, but I don't know about the quality of the pictures.

[Toad]

I don't think that the Cokin system would be any good for IR filters - too much like leakage.

Nice use of IR BTW K...

[Keith Alan]

Thanks, Toad.

Irma, my Sony has 58mm threads on the lens.
I just screw all the filters together, and I think I can add one more ND4 without getting any vignetting at the wide-angle setting of my zoom.

A modified camera has the IR-cut filter removed from in front of the sensor, so adding a visible-light removing filter is necessary for sharpness, since IR and visible light do not focus at the same spot.
This filter can be installed inside when the camera is modified, but of course it then becomes IR-only.
If screw-on filters can be used, you can get an IR filter and a visible light filter to shoot both ways.

My camera swings the IR-cut filter out of the way at the flip of a switch, but when Sony first introduced this feature called "Nightshot" (for night vision--there are two IR emitters on the front of my lens) it was discovered that when using certain aperture/shutter combinations during the day it was possible to see through people's clothes!
So Sony crippled the system by only allowing nightshot to be used in auto and program modes, with the widest aperture and shutter speeds of 1/60 and slower forced upon us!
That's the only reason I have to use neutral density filters during the day, to prevent severe overexposure.

Modified cameras are much more versatile, allowing all possible settings including white balance, which many IR photographers experiment with to get some beautiful colors.
WB is locked-out for me, so everything I shoot is shades of green.

I'm sure your system will be much much better than mine, both for sharpness and creative control.

[Irma]

Thanks so much Keith for your explanation, I feel like I want to take pictures this way. I have seen beautiful ones, and I know a camera clinic. I will ask them if they can do it.

I have also seen PS tutorials and actions, but I really don't know what to think. As I have never taken an IR picture, I really don't know how it should look like.

[shuttertalk]

Superb image Keith, and I really mean it... I'd frame it if it were mine!

I really like the composition, contrast and cleanness of the whole pic. Great job...

[NT73]

It is like HDR in B&W. A beauty.