Help on IR shots

[karnage]

Hi everyone,

I tried out some IR shots with my FZ20 yesterday. Had on a Hoya R72, ISO80, f8.0, 8sec, mounted on tripod. Here's one of the results:

Before Post Process:


After Channel Mixer:


After Noise reduction (Strength 10, Preserve details 30%, Reduce color noise 100%, Sharpen details 0%):


Can anyone advise me how to improve my picture, post-process-wise? I'm still learning to compose nicely...

[TrailsofLife]

What do you want us to do?

Looking at your image...its a little out of focus & underexposed. The thing with compact digicam, due to its small ccd, when you try to push up the contrast in Photoshop, it tends to get noisy.

Maybe you want to get a proper exposure and sharp image first? If you need to push up the ISO, do so. So when comes to post-process, you dun have to do sharpening and contrast and noise reduction. Over post-processed image is never appealing.

My PP is only, auto level and channel mix. And some may need a little sharpening but not too much.

Its a good try, at least, you gets the colours right.
Hope this helps.

Cheers
Max 2.8

[dominator]

with a lumix camera other than Fz1 iso80 is not enough.
FZ20 already quite bad for taking IR setting aperture at F8 is even worst(underexpose even at 8sec)...try F5 and below imo.

Cheers~
I am using FZ5

[Jemapela]

Hmm... dig this.

Using ISO800 in daylight on EOS 20D, I had exposures lasting 45s at f/5.6.

What a bummer. I could brush my teeth in that time...

[TrailsofLife]

Hi J,

Which filter are you using? Check with PandaOng, he's been shooting with 20D for quite some time, his longest exposure I know of is 30secs. He is using R72.

[PandaOng]

For ISO800 and f5.6, 45s is maybe a bit of a long exposure. maybe the sun wasn't really out.

For your comparison, karnage and Jemapela

Color photo - ISO 400 1/250s @ f11


IR photo b4 PP - ISO 400 30s @ f6.3


After PP - Just for the record, after PP, this is the ideal color that it generate.

from the calculation, the difference is actually about 15.5 stops away...
f11 to f6.3 (1 1/2 stop)
1/250 -> 1/125 -> 1/60 ->1/30 ->1/15 ->1/8 -> 1/4 ->1/2 ->1s -> 2s-> 4s -> 8s -> 15s -30s

[karnage]

To Max: Yah, I also think it's underexposed. But 8sec is the longest my cam can support. silvergetz suggested upping the ISO to 100, which I will try next time.

How can I achieve sharp focus? For this shot, I merely used the camera's autofocus. With the R72 on, I can't see the scene before me! Haha! How? Anyways, for my PP, I also did an Auto-levels and Channel Mixer only. Noise reduction is to remove color noise, which has an obvious effect when you zoom in.

Wah, how come the 20D requires such a long exposure? Some more at a high ISO...

[fuse]

does that mean that we need to choose bright sunny days, with max aperature and also our longest shutter opening to get something close???

me jus tried IR too with my second hand filter from unseen bro

[photoexpress]

Originally Posted by karnage To Max: Yah, I also think it's underexposed. But 8sec is the longest my cam can support. silvergetz suggested upping the ISO to 100, which I will try next time. How can I achieve sharp focus? For this shot, I merely used the camera's autofocus. With the R72 on, I can't see the scene before me! Haha! How? Anyways, for my PP, I also did an Auto-levels and Channel Mixer only. Noise reduction is to remove color noise, which has an obvious effect when you zoom in. Wah, how come the 20D requires such a long exposure? Some more at a high ISO...

ISO200 is still okay, can try. This should help:- Focus first, set focus to lock and then attach the F72 filter.