As you may know the human eye can only see a small part of the full light spectrum in the world. This is known as the visible spectrum, and it is what photography works with...mostly.

Using special films and filters you can actually photograph in the infrared spectrum. I recently came into possession of several rolls of Infrared film, sadly not the famous Kodak HIE, but two rolls of Konica IR750, a bunch of (highly sought after) Efke IR820, a roll of (sort of infrared) Ilford SFX200, and bought some Rollei Infrared film. So I purchased a nice Kenko R72 filter big enough to screw into my 35mm lens for my Pentax 645, and the 17-55mm and 70-200mm lens for my Nikon D300. I also have a Hoya 89b filter for smaller lenses.

My first test didn't turn out too well using some very expired Konica IR750 film...but in the February 1st podcast from the FPP I picked up a couple tips for the second roll I have. But it gave the IR effect. Black skies, white greens. I exposed the film at ISO-10 based on Internet reading, but the second roll will be exposed slower, maybe ISO-1 (like Efke films).





Pentax 645 - SMC Pentax A 645 35mm 1:3.5 - Konica IR750 - HC-110 Dil. B 7:00 @ 20C

I also slapped the filter onto my D300 and fired off and got some pretty pleasing results as well, but have to work a bit on my exposure still.



However it was back on Monday that I got my first real taste of what can be done with Infrared film using a roll of the Rollei IR film. Now for the most part IR film is rated at 400, because adding the filter in front has such a high filter factor you have to pull the film several stops, in this case I exposed the film at ISO-25 (that's 4 stops). I used my trusty Gossen Luna Pro F to manually meter each scene. The results, well they speak for themselves. I can't wait to actually print some of these.







Pentax 645 - SMC Pentax A 645 35mm 1:3.5 - Rollei Infrared @ ISO-25 - Rodinal 1+50 12:00 @ 20C

Now I wait for spring and summer to arrive to work more in infrared, I'm also glad I can still get new stock film because I'm rather enjoying this look.

Long Live Film.