Christopher J Osborne

I first started experimenting with infrared photography using a Sony DSC-F828 camera with the 'magnet hack'. But I had so much fun that I decided to buy a more specialised camera specially converted for infrared photograph. That camera was a Panasonic G3 mirrorless camera (so I could use my collection of M4/3 lenses) with a 'full-spectrum' conversion.

A normal digital camera has an 'IR/UV cut' filter installed in front of your cameras sensor to filter out both UV and IR light which can spoil normal visible light photography. A full-spectrum infrared conversion replaces this filter with a clear glass filter to allow all visible and non-visible light wavelengths to reach the sensor. You then need to place a filter of some sort on your lens to filter out most of the visible light and UV. This has the disadvantage of requiring that additional filter on your lens, but the big advantage of allowing you vary the filter on your lens to experiment with different infrared effects.

Most of these photographs were taken with a 950nm filter which is the strongest filter normally used for infrared photography and filters out almost all visible light. A few were taken using 720nm and 850nm filters which let a bit more visible light through for a very similar, but slightly subtler, effect. But I found that on my Panasonic G3 a 950nm filter works best. Filters of 720nm or higher are generally used for b&w infrared photography with that typical 'white leaves' effect you can see in this gallery.

Filters that let even more visible light through, such as 665nm, 590nm and 550nm are generally used for so called 'false colour' infrared photography, and I have yet to experiment with this kind of infrared photography. I do have an IR Chrome filter which I have use with some success on my Sony F828, but I have yet to use it to any great extent on my fill-spectrum converted Panasonic G3.