After years of wanting one, I finally got a digital infrared camera. Ever since the late 1980’s, I have been a fan of Kodak’s High Speed Infrared film. Sadly, this, like so many other great specialty films, is no longer produced. For a while I’ve had this original Canon Digital Rebel sitting on a shelf. Finally this spring I decided to reintroduce infrared into my photographic vocabulary. The Rebel was sent off and was converted—sensors in digital cameras are just as sensitive to infrared light as they are to visible light—it’s a filter built into the camera that keeps the infrared part of the spectrum from showing up in your photos. Now there are several services around the country that will remove the IR filter and replace it with a filter that blocks the visible light and allows only the IR light to pass through.
The images don’t look quite like Kodak’s great film, but the tonalities are very similar, and with a few post-production tweaks you can get a picture with great atmosphere. How I’m going to use this newly modified camera, I have not yet decided.
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