Simple Infrared Photo From the Regular One

Frankly I'm jealous of the photographers who have an infrared camera modifications. While although I have a Hoya infrared filter, but the result does not really come what I had in mind. My camera is Canon 400D. Someone said that this camera is not suitable for IR photography with a filter.

Various problems encountered.

1. Deep black filter that makes the ability to focus is lost. The idea is to set the focus first and then attach the filter.
2. Darkness makes the camera needs a long exposure to achieve Ev 0 so then I would  need a tripod. Don't try to shoot a moving subject like human with these tools. You'll get a ghostly picture unless this is what you want.
3. The resulting image is really like a flood of red. And I do not know how to edit it with photoshop. Some said I should turn the red channel to blue and blue to red. Didn't work with my 'flooded red' picture.

Conclusion, My camera  cannot be paired with this filter. But I do not give up so easily. After looking at various websites I finally found myself  a simple and suitable formula. A Tutorial for Simple IR Editing.

This technique comes only with four steps:

1. Choose a photo with lots of green plants. For IR images of green plants will turn into white  (for B/W Infrared) or somewhat pinky brown. For my formula, I choose the latter.

2. Use photoshop, I use Adobe Photoshop CS3. Rather old but still powerful.

3. Choose Channel Mixer.

4. Go to Channel Mixer - Output Channel - Green. From Green, slide the Red to 50%, Green  to 0% and Blue to 50%.

5. Done! You have finished simple IR. Easy isn'it? There's more? Yes, of course. But it will come on the next post. A Tutorial for Advanced IR Editing.