INTO THE WONDERFUL
By removing this tiny glass filter, the camera is able to visualise both the blue and red ends of the spectrum, with quite amazing results. Having a spare camera body, I decided to risk a conversion and had the body sent off to a technician in Greece, who made the conversion for me.
At first, I wasn't too impressed with the quality, as its much more difficult to use autofocus with a full spectrum camera, as the sensor is relying on visual information. Also, the colour range was a bit restricted to pinks, instead of the fabulous reds and blues I was expecting.
However, after a little trial and error, I discovered that the key was to apply an additional filter to the front of the lens, to allow various wavelengths of infra red light to be admitted, making the photographs much clearer. As you can see from the two photographs above, both taken in full midday sunshine in the Mediterranian, foliage reflects the radiation and appears to glow a ghostly white. The purple cast on the upper photograph is the result of using an 850 nm filter to cut down the red in the image and the lower pinkish tone is around 750nm.
Processing an IR shot using the app, or in programmes such as Adobe Lightroom, can transform the scene even further, creating an ethereal and ghostly image.
Hipstamatic and Fimo both allow the shot to be taken with a range of filters, or to process any photograph after the fact, either by selecting from the phones storage, or by importing as RAW or jpeg from a camera.
Straight out of the camera, contrast is low and the colours are quite muted, but by photographing in RAW format, a world of adjustments can be applied. Its also possible to make radical changes by swapping the red and blue channels in Photoshop, or by converting to monochrome for a really high contrast image.
Its essential to shoot in as strong sunshine as possible, as different materials absorb or reflect the radiation in various ways, making for some unpredictable effects. While in Scotland recently, I took adantage of the sunny days to shoot in the highlands with dramatic effect. The skies tend to be a shade darker and uniformly pink, without using a specific filter, but RAW prcessing allows a multitude of changes to be applied.
Another way to achieve a faux IR effect is to use a colour grading app, such as Fimo or Hipstamatic, which give you the option to use software based lenses and films to create a combination of effects. The Fimo Red film, simulates the Kodak Aerochrome film, which gives beautiful scarlet foliage and rich blue skies.
Hipstamatic allows the user to select a lens, film and flash combination from a library of effects packs, which are infinitely interchangeable. These can then be used to shoot in a certain style - pinhole, IR, sepia, instamatic or emulating a number of antique lenses, or can be applied to any photograph with a comprehensive set of editing tools.
