Reddit mentions: The best camera lens infrared filters

Thanks, I shot about 3 rolls up there in Montana and managed to get a couple of shots I was happy with. It is the Rollei/AGFA Infrared 400 film. Although I don't use the 25a filter. I find it just doesn't block enough of the spectrum to provide interesting results. I have much better luck with a 720 filter. Only problem with that is that the thing is damn near black, and impossible to see though. So you have to set up your shot, get your focus set, find the f-stop and shutter speed you are happy with, then drop down about 3 or 4 f-stops, put the filter on, and then take the picture. I almost always take 3 pictures in a row, stepping down an f-stop each time to get a nice bracket in case the light is different than I expect. It definitely takes a couple of rolls to figure out with a filter that dark.

As for developing the film, sadly, I haven't had access to a darkroom in a couple of years. But I have had the luck of finding a camera shop with a dependable guy here in town that still develops film. I called him up and asked him what he does. So, he uses TMax at the 1+4 concentration. He said he has tried a couple of different times over the years, but had the best results with about 7 minutes, maybe even just a little more. But 7 minutes 15 seconds was a bit too long, according to him. So 7 minutes is about the sweet spot. Also, go with 70 degrees Fahrenheit or even a few degrees warmer, but stay above 70. Honestly, its a picky film so you may have to go through a couple of practice rolls to get it spot on before you develop anything important.

Any questions are welcome. I have an on-again off-again love affair with this film. Every couple of months I get the itch to try it again and get it just right.

Some information is here: http://www.lifepixel.com/lens-considerations/lens-hot-spot-testing-database#fuji

But I also go based off my personal experience. The 18-55mm is bad and the 23mm f/2 is great. The Rokinon 12mm is very good, but I haven't tried the 50-230mm. Since foliage is a great subject in infrared, wide angle lenses are good for landscapes. So the Rokinon and the 23mm f/2 are ideal anyway.

Obviously, only buy one filter and then buy step-up rings to adapt a larger filter to smaller lens. So if the Rokinon is your biggest lens, get a 67mm filter and for a few bucks you can get a ring to adapt 67mm to the 23mm's 43mm filter thread. 43mm will also fit the 35mm f/2 lens, if you ever get that lens.

The Hoya filter is about $65, but if you aren't serious and don't care about image quality, you can also try some cheap Neewer filters on Amazon, like this one for $18 (although I haven't personally tried it):

http://www.amazon.com/Neewer-Infrared-Filter-Optical-Aluminum/dp/B073FG7GQ7/

I worked on exactly this project. My team and I came up with an interesting hardware solution that worked really well, but it was pretty time-consuming to get it assembled.

There's a lot of ambient light out there, so picking out a laser dot reliably could be tough. Especially if the color of the laser is in your environment (like a red laser on a red wall). What we did was use an infrared laser, which are readily available on the internet (very powerful as well). There's a lot less ambient IR than visible light. What's cool is that most digital cameras can see IR; if you have an old cell phone, its camera will see IR as white, which is neat. Most webcams have a small filter in them that blocks out this IR. If you remove that filter (it's usually a small square piece of plastic that's clear) then the camera can see IR. You can even block out all of the visible light by using a camera filter (like one of these http://www.amazon.com/Polaroid-Optics-IR720-Infrared-Filter/dp/B0057GNDBA/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1373509530&sr=8-2&keywords=infrared+filter) so that the camera really sees nothing but the laser. For us, this hardware setup made image processing SUPER easy and reliable.

Hey Alex,

Thank you so much for taking the time for this. I'm currently using an Canon Rebel T1i (old and crappy). The supposed IR filter that I'm using is this one here.

You said that you tried to process the image I posted, and it didn't work. This leaves me with two possibilities: 1) My camera (internally) isn't capable of IR photography because of its internal make up. 2) The filter (as you mentioned, and I posted above) that I'm using isn't an IR filter at all.

If the camera is the issue, I'll have to wait because I don't want to convert it as it is my only DSLR. If the filter is the issue, can you please send me a link to which one would be doable? That Hoya filter seems to be the one everyone is talking about. Is that a good choice?

Finally, could you share some of your methods in post? Do you use Photoshop? Thanks again for your help, Alex!

-Tarun

The exact process is going to be different for every camera, but I followed both parts of this tutorial, and used this $14 lens from Amazon.

Just make sure before you do anything that the camera you're planning to convert can do custom white balances because you'll need to set the white balance to green for it to work properly.

It also helps to have access to Photoshop because you'll need to switch the red and blue channels in order to make the sky blue.

Yes, there are filters that block visible light and let IR through. You can buy one for a camera too (depending on the type of camera/lens), but most definitely not for $10 mentioned by another poster.

http://www.amazon.com/Hoya-58mm-RM-72-Infrared-Filter/dp/B0000AI1HP

If you are using a film camera, you will need special IR-sensitive film. If you are using digital, then you will have to have the UV + IR filter removed from over the sensor.

Source: I'm a photographer.

Threads like these always seem to bombard people with directions to a hundred different money sinks. If you just want to make a cheap attempt to get your feet wet, get an inexpensive IR filter off amazon like this one, screw it on your lens and go out and take some pictures.

As others have mentioned, you won't get any super-crisp images without modifying your camera, since the on-sensor IR filter requires looooong exposures to be able to make any sort of image. If you're just playing around and magnificent quality isn't the top priority, shoot in max ISO and you should be able to get away with 1-2 second exposures in broad daylight. A tripod helps a lot.

Try to stay away from filters that block anything above 720nm without modifying your camera, though. They will block out way too much light and it will be much harder to get a clear image.

This might be an obvious question, but is there an external filter for blocking infrared rays? Trying to search for one online gives filters used to allow infrared rays, but I also find things like this, which I can't tell if it's what I'm looking for or if it's just a minor improvement.

They also posted this:

$100 DIY "X-RAY" CAMERA TO SEE THROUGH THEIR MASKS

Background: Infrared light is light in the range of 700nm-1,000nm. This light is invisible to the human eye, but visible to most camera sensors, and is transmitted through certain clothing, particularly dark colored and thin cotton and polyester like ANTIFA’s bandanas. Some of you might remember a bunch of “news reports” about a Sony video camera that could “x-ray” clothes – this is the effect we are talking about. Now, there are two steps to making one of these at home: 1) remove the IR filter on the camera, and 2) filtering the visible light so that the IR dominates the image.

For the first, I recommend this tutorial: [spoiler]

https:/[/spoiler]/www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUtoLBOego4

It uses a ~$60 "action camera" clone of the gopro which should have good mounting options for your protest gear.

Next, reassemble the camera and glue this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00XU8SHE0/ref=twister_B01DA1ASWU?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1#customerReviews over the lens, as close as you can get it to the lens housing.

There you go. For less than $100 you should have a basic infrared camera that can see through some clothing. Here's a video demo of how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UBbjwPnW1E

It's not perfect, obviously, nor will it unmask every antifa you catch on camera, but it should be able to give our doxsquads more to go on and preserve more evidence for later use. More importantly, antifa won't know if their masks are protecting them or not. As we saw at Auburn, unmasking them sends them running immediately. I think the psychological aspect may be more potent than the information gathering.

If you think weaponized autism is bad, check this out.



** Spez'd the source to avoid incurring the wrath of the almighty autists.

Visible light is brighter than infrared to your mobile phone camera but you can buy a filter to see just infrared

Here is the original source with some extra info

DSLRs have inbuilt filters that remove parts of the spectrum that you can't normally see (infrared, UV light etc.).

That said, some of the light still gets through to the sensor, just vastly reduced in brightness.

So all you need to do is block all light except for the infrared light and you'll be able to take infrared pictures; which is where an infrared filter comes into play.

Note that you'll want to do some searching, as some cameras are more sensitive to infrared than others. But it's likely you'll be looking at like 30 second exposures in the middle of the day.

You can build your own IR headtracker for cheap (less than $50 total). You can find hardware plans here (if you don't have access to a 3d printer directly you can find people online to print it for you, or you can google around for other home built options), you can buy a PS3Eye camera on Amazon along with an IR Filter, and the OpenTrack software is free. The hardware assembly is simple enough to do with no soldering (I recommend you do solder if you know how) and the OpenTrack software is very easy to configure.

I ended up getting this Marumi IR filter.

http://www.amazon.com/Marumi-Filter-Infrared-Infra-Red-700HB/dp/B003DWA7FK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323733988&sr=8-1

I ended up going with this as I only have 77mm lenses and the R72 is close to $200. If it ended up working great, if it didn't I can swallow ~50 bucks better than I can ~200.

At this point I am kinda thinking that I am not exposing the picture long enough. I set the camera on BULB and left the lens open for close to 90 seconds and the trees started turning white at the edges but still not exactly what I was looking for. It was closer to the end of the day so there wasn't a lot of light.

I have a question on infrared photography. I've seen lens cap thingies like this one on sale on Amazon for a fairly cheap price. Would the lenses produce the similar images, or do you need to buy a specific body/lens?

Would something like this work?

https://www.amazon.com/NEEWER%C2%AE-Infra-Red-Filter-Camera-Thread/dp/B003TY4YWE/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=infrared+filter&qid=1570733431&sr=8-6

https://www.amazon.com/Lee-Filters-87C-Infrared-Polyester/dp/B00FWGFC2S/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=infrared+filter&qid=1570733431&sr=8-5

also, while it's a bit harder to find these days, I THINK you can used developed color photo film as a DIY stand-in. I

I use this under $10 filter for my IR photography with my Nikon P7000 that has not had any internal modifications done. And I think it does a pretty decent job.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003U65A7E/ref=oh_details_o02_s00_i00

Here's another example of an image I've taken with this filter
http://i.imgur.com/mtCYB.jpg

Source: I'm a turtle.

well photoshop was used in order to channel swap , I used a 092 filter which you can check out here https://www.amazon.com/77mm-Infrared-Filter-092-89B/dp/B0000BZLAU I used a full spectrum fujifilm cmera with the filter mounted over , when I channel swap the red and blue channels the sky comes out blue , clouds come out white and people look that color

https://www.amazon.com/Quanmin-Optical-filter-Blocking-camera/dp/B015R07LPO?ref_=fsclp_pl_dp_1

Slap that over your camera and this is defeated.

Besides the DSLR mod the OP mentioned, you can also use a filter on your lens; however, most DSLRs come with a film on the CCD that also filters out IR, so you usually need to use very long exposures (30s+) to get anything.

What if I told you.... There is a 82mm

Ir filters for cameras usually filter IR out , for dk2 camera you would want band pass filter that passes only IR

edit: sorry actually IR filters for slr's are usually passing only IR, so they should work (eg. http://www.amazon.com/NEEWER%C2%AE-58MM-Infrared-Filter-Camera/dp/B003U65A7E), many digital cameras have integrated IR filters that filter out the IR and thats what i was basing my first answer on.

then you pop one of these badboys on there to filter out the visible light spectrum
http://www.amazon.com/Hoya-58mm-RM-72-Infrared-Filter/dp/B0000AI1HP

and you get this
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/images/infrared-photography/fish.jpg

Is this it?
http://www.amazon.com/Hoya-58mm-RM-72-Infrared-Filter/dp/B0000AI1HP

Here's the one I bought.

https://www.amazon.com/Hoya-58mm-R-72-Infrared-Filter/dp/B0000AI1HP/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1497204649&sr=8-3&keywords=hoya+r72+infrared+filter

Couldn’t you tape one of these to the front?


https://www.amazon.com/IR720-Infrared-Filter-Camera-Digital/dp/B07R8N9P5S/ref=zg_bs_3109905011_4/140-7095841-0830836?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=CFFXY9YCQJ8R4KME44RN

But then you would lose night vision I suppose.

For what it's worth you can buy filters for your DSLR that remove all the visible light and only expose IR light to the CCD. Then you can do IR photography and take pictures like these.

The problem is you are now filtering out most of the visible light and the filter covering the camera's CCD is filtering out most of the IR light so you are left with very long shutter speeds. The solution is to modify your DSLR and take out the filter that covers the CCD. Hard-core IR photographers will do exactly this and then they can do much faster photography in the IR spectrum. Of course, now your camera is gonna take weird normal photos so you better make the mod to an older camera you don't care about...

PS: A lot of webcams "night vision" modes are just a bunch of IR LED's (the kind you'd see in a remote except much brigher) that illuminate the darkly lit room... You can't see the LED's cause your eye doesn't do IR but the CCD on the webcam sure as hell can...