some eerie pics from my first walk with an infra-red-converted nikon d40.
bought pre-converted from a european artist who works in i-r. i know the camera model well and it was offered at less than i’ve seen for conversion services alone.
there’s a certain amount of post processing going on here. some cameras allow a custom white-balance to be set, if i understand right that gives you immediate feedback on replay. this doesn’t – the images are *very* red and require white balance, levels and channel switching tweaks.
this type of photography runs the risk of being discounted as “just another photoshop filter” – or selective colour effects – but it’s actually recording a different spectrum of light to that visible with the naked eye.
digital camera sensors are particularly sensitive to infrared, and are made with a filter to block that light in preference to the visible spectrum. conversions remove this filter and replace it with one of a number of different alternative filters.
the camera was supplied with excellent advice on hard- and soft-ware settings and i enjoy the reveal of applying these filters step by step, suddenly realising a could-go-either-way image suddenly shines in i-r B)
i process every picture on the same settings – some come out noticeably blue throughout, while others have distracting orange tones. i have discretion like a darkroom processor printing an enlargement, in terms of which tones – warm or cool – that i choose for the finished picture. otherwise, images are as they come out of the camera.
maker soph 