My first try at near Infra Red photography.

I have just bought a Hoya R/72 Infra Red filter for my Canon 550d,and below are some of my pics.
First of all,I took this one without using the "custom white balance"setting on the camera:



I then used this pic of the grass as the custom white balance setting(A tip I got from the net,links at the end of this post):



So with white balance adjusted I get better results like this:



And messing around further with different ISO/shutter speeds I get these:







This one is using the same white balance,of the fire in my house-not sure why its crazy blue-maybe someone knows why its so blue?



The lens I am using is not perfect for the R/72 filter-Its the standard 18-55mm that I got with the camera.
You can see it gives a slighly blueish patch,most noticable in the picture of the house,by the uppper window,but its not as bad as I had expected.
What I would like to achieve is a tad more colours in the images-What do you think I should do to get that result?
Use a different image for custom white balance,or something else?
I know folks use photoshop to swap the red/green channels to get different effects,but I don't have photoshop-Does anyone have any good tips when using IR filters?
BTW,You should be able to see all the photo details if you right click,select properties on the images.
Here are some of the web links I used to get started:

www.amazon.co.uk...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363439597&sr=8-1

www.learnmyshot.com...

www.infovein.org...

photography-on-the.net...

Thanks for looking folks,any tips and tricks much appreciated!

Been thinking about getting one of those!

How much was it? Nice first tries too! Now you can catch some of those nefarious invisible UFO's that only show up in IR...

reply to post by abeverage


Cheers abevarage!
The filter was £35-not cheap,but cheaper than a camera conversion.
It does have some limits though-longer exposures needed,focus has to be done with filter off,as you can't see through the lens with filter on.

If you are thinking of getting a filter-check to make sure your camera can"see" IR light by setting an exposure of 1 second or so,then aim the TV remote at the lens and press a few buttons while the shot is being taken.

If you get an image with light emitting from the end of the remote-your camera can see IR,and the filter will work.
(Most cameras have IR blocking filters inside,but these vary in effectiveness,meaning some cameras will do a better job than others.)


Edit-heres a (really bad)photo of me pointing the TV remote at the camera(with filter off)to test for IR-you can see a red blur of light coming from the remote in my hand:

A better attempt at a fireplace shot,we now have more than blue colours.

reply to post by Silcone Synapse


SS, Not too bad for first tries ...I'm about to try IR on my camera which I have been wanting to do for a while. You might want to look into "GIMP". This is freeware that is basically the poor man's Photoshop. I started using GIMP a few months ago and my post production results are far better than when I was using "Paint.net".