About Infrared Photography

Up until very recently, Infrared photography has been difficult and expensive to work in, and had been ignored by most photographers due to the special handling requirements of IR film - its not only light sensitive, but heat sensitive as well. It requires refrigeration up to the moment it is exposed, then needs to be returned to refrigeration until it is processed. The film is expensive to not only purchase - about two to three times more expensive than conventional 35mm color film - but needs to be sent off to a lab for processing, unless the photographer has the luxury of owning a dark room. Sending film off to a lab of course means the photographer is totally out of the loop while processing. Flash forward to the 21'st century. Every day, digital cameras are winning over professional "old school" film photographers who swore they would never shoot digital. The quality of digital cameras keeps going up, while the cost keeps coming down. One hour processing mini labs in discount stores are being replaced by do it yourself digital kiosks. Film - a 19'th century technology - appears to be on its way out, save for special uses and the efforts of a few sentimental die-hards. Few people realize this, but all digital cameras are by their very nature IR sensitive. The CCD and CMOS sensors (which are the digital cameras "film plate") are so sensitive to infrared, that camera manufacturers typically have to block out extraneous IR light to get proper white balanced images with a special blocking filter known as a "hot mirror". Modification to the digital camera - replacing the IR blocking "hot mirror" with an IR passive filter allows the reverse - IR wavelengths to pass to the sensor, rejecting visible wavelengths. In other words, IR photography has entered the digital domain. Digital IR has been born.