The Trials and Tribulations of Experimenting With Infrared Photography

A few months ago, I explored a new photography challenge and invested in an infrared filter for landscape photography. I could've bought an already converted used camera, but after looking at what was available on the used market and specialist conversion services, investing in a filter seemed to be at a more appealing price point and the best of both worlds. After several trials and tribulations, I became hooked on this newly discovered world of infrared photography.

The filter in question is the B+W 093 IR Black 830 made by Schneider Kreuznach. I chose this filter because I wanted to use it mainly for long-exposure black-and-white landscape photography. When it finally arrived, I waited for a clear, sunny summer day and headed out to a forest nearby to do a few test shots. Once I got the camera set up and ready to shoot, I screwed the filter to the front of the lens and immediately met my first challenge: attempting to focus the image within a completely black frame.

What Is The Infrared Wavelength?

But first, I want to give you some insight into infrared photography if, like me, you still need to venture further into this unique form of photography. Our eyes can only see the visible light spectrum (the wavelengths ranging from 400 nm to 700 nm), a tiny region within the electromagnetic spectrum containing everything from gamma rays to visible light, infrared, X-ray, radio, microwave, and ultraviolet wavelengths. The infrared spectrum starts at 700 nm and ends at 1,200 nm, which is invisible to the human eye.

Modern camera sensors come fitted with an IR cut filter, which blocks infrared light. A specialist can remove this filter, but doing so will make your camera a dedicated infrared camera. Alternatively, you can buy screw-on filters to expose the camera's sensor to infrared light. One such popular option is the Hoya R72 filter, which cuts out visible light at 720 nm, allowing a small amount of visible light to hit the sensor. However, if you want true infrared, investing in a filter such as the B+W 093 IR Black 830 filter will cut out all visible light and only allow infrared light from 830 nm to enter through the lens. This filter causes extended exposure times due to the range of infrared light it allows through. Think of it as screwing a 10- to 15-stop ND filter on the front of your lens. It will cause you to sit there and twiddle your thumbs while you wait for the camera to finish exposing.

Facing The Challenges

This brings us back to the first issue I experienced earlier. After fitting the filter to the front of a 110mm f/2 Fujifilm GF lens, I couldn't see anything through the Fujifilm GFX 100 II viewfinder. It didn't help that I found myself in a dense forest in the English countryside, but I persevered. There had to be a way to get past this issue. I had a choice: push the ISO and lower the shutter speed to see whether I'd be successful in getting a live preview of the exposure and potentially manually focus my lens to get a sharp image before switching the settings back to a lower, less noisy ISO and extended shutter speed to take the shot. It worked. Sort of. I could make out the highlights in the image, but the noise muddied up the picture so much that I wasn't confident in my manual focusing capabilities. It goes without saying that with such a dark image, autofocus will not work.

Here is where another choice, such as the Hoya R72, would be a better option, as it still lets in a limited amount of visible light, allowing you to frame the subject and use autofocus in most conditions. With the 830 nm filter, there was no way of doing that. I took a chance and focused before setting the camera to Bulb mode. I thought an exposure time of 1 minute at 100 ISO f/2 would suffice, but all the camera returned was a pitch-black frame. Bugger. Try again. Three minutes later, I got something resembling an image, but the focus was soft, so I found another challenge to try and solve.

Achieving Focus With Infrared Photography

Unlike visible light, infrared light enters the lens and hits the sensor at a slightly different angle than visible light, in the same way, you have chromatic aberration in the visible light spectrum. The cause of this is certain light waves entering the lens at a slightly different angle than the rest of the visible light rays. To combat the issue of infrared rays refracting through the lens at a different angle, engineers added an infrared marker on lenses manufactured as early as the 1960s when infrared photography went mainstream with the release of Kodak's 35mm Aerochrome infrared film. Unfortunately, the infrared marker was added to most mainstream lenses throughout the '60s, '70s, '80s, and '90s. Unfortunately, when digital cameras entered the market, the infrared marker wasn't added to as many DSLR lenses as their film SLR counterparts.

Like most modern lenses, the GF 110mm f/2 does not have an IR focus marker (you can still find this on some older DSLR lenses, such as the Canon 16-35 mm f/2.8 II L lens). Around 30 minutes later, after taking a few test shots and shifting focus, I finally got a sharp image. The result was a weird monochromatic purple image, which didn't strike me as anything beautiful. The contrast was flat and overall unappealing. I didn't think much of it. When taking an infrared photograph, it picks up the infrared wavelengths reflected off objects. Foliage turns bright white, the sky turns black, and human skin becomes almost ghostly as it reflects the infrared light.

How To Edit Infrared Images

I arrived home a few hours later, loaded the photos in Adobe Camera Raw, converted the image to black and white, and pushed the contrast to expand the histogram as best I could—finally, a pleasing result. I realized there was a lot more to this art form than I initially anticipated, and boy, was the effort worth it!

I've included my workflow below if you want to try infrared photography using a filter such as the B+W 093 IR Black 830 filter. However, if you've been shooting infrared for a while, I'd love your thoughts on improving. Please leave your suggestions in the comments below.

I've used Adobe Camera Raw for this exercise, but you can follow along in Adobe Lightroom as the process is quite similar. First, open your image in Adobe Camera Raw and set the color to B&W.

Adobe Camera Raw will transform the monochromatic purple image into a flat black-and-white image, so we'll need to adjust the contrast to get a better-quality photo. I've had to shift the contrast to a value of 83, the Whites to 63, and the Blacks to -91 to get a decent amount of contrast in the photo.

Once I finished the basic global adjustments, I wanted to further enhance the focus on the tree in the foreground by dodging and burning different areas of the image using masks.

With some basic sharpening and glow added to the image, you get an ethereal-looking black-and-white landscape image.

There's nothing like a seemingly insignificant filter to make me feel like I knew nothing about photography, even though I've been practicing this art form for the last 18 years. I was in uncharted waters, but I loved the thrill of it. It reignited my passion for photography, like the first day picking up a camera and exploring the unknown. Finding the solution in this alien art form gave me a new understanding of photography after I felt like I'd reached a plateau after shooting the same type of photography for almost two decades.