Today’s featured photo of the day! September’s feature is: Infrared Photography

Here is today’s featured photo. For the month of September I am featuring Infrared photography as the style. For today, I am posting a magnificent method (explained below) of shooting infrared featuring a photo of colorful autumn trees in the Tinley Creek Woods in the Cook County forest preserves in Illinois. Date – October 1982

Photo taken with a Nikon FE camera through a Nikon 26 mm lens, filter=polarizer and yellow filter, Aperture=2.8 f/stop, shutter-speed 1/1000th second, loaded with Kodak Ektachrome Infrared Color  IE 135-20 Infrared Slide Film processed E-6 using Kodak Ektachrome Chemicals. Enlargement processed Type R color positive paper and R-3000 chemistry onto 3½x5″ glossy negative color image enlargement paper. EXPLANATION OF PHOTOGRAPHIC METHOD: Shooting original analog 35mm IR film with the yellow filter on shows a dramatic effect on the aperture, causing what used to be referred to as the variable between IR light and visible light, which usually has effect more pronounced on the edges of lens, sometimes causing a fish-eye effect in the photo. IR not only focuses at a different rate as per visible, it has different properties through most other aspects and properties of exposure. This effect definitely shows off the quality of any lens, as a quality lens has little or no fish-eye effect, whereas a lower quality lens can affect most infrared photos. By shooting a lower f-stop, allowing more light to pass through the lens, the yellow filter still lets the light reflected off objects in brightly, but shows the radiance of the sky making a hue of midnight blue. Shooting a higher f-stop allows less effect of radiance onto the film–because lower shutter speeds let more radiant light through, making the midnight hue contrast more even, and therefore, if I were to shoot the photo with less opening, the midnight blue turns lighter. The aperture has a definite different effect on exposure of the film while shooting IR than visible light spectrum. This was definitely more true with film than with digital photography. There were some fair quality lenses that showed fish-eye effects on most if not all of the standard photographs, especially black and white. It is my recommendation that if you are interested in shooting infrared photos successfully, that investing in a higher quality lens is an absolute must, film or digital.

Enjoy, and see you tomorrow with another fine Infrared photograph!!
© 2019 Versatileer

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