Lofoten VII

[Knut S]

Fuji X-E2 18-55mm

[Knut S]

D200ir 12-24mm

[Frank Fremerey]

looks like you are a real fan and adept of Ansel Adams.

[Erik Lund]

Very nice IR and B&W conversions! Uncomplicated and crisp.

[Bjørn Rørslett]

Personally I think digital IR needs more massaging of the tone curve to make the outcome less grey and thereby bland. Not that it should look like Kodak HIE film of days happily long gone, of course, but a bit more snap and punch go a long way to make good IR photos even better.

[Erik Lund]

I tend to agree,,, but here even though, the image details stands out quite clearly. And kudos to Knut for keeping your consistent 'look and feel' to your files!

[Bjørn Rørslett]

Again speaking from personal opinion, the first one looks pretty good even with the slightly flat tonal curve. The muted contrast suits the subject. However, in the second photo, I think the overall greyish impression just does not do the subject justice.

Digital IR really exacerbates the traditional issues of a digital capture converted directly into black and white, which tends to bland results. The contrast of a digital IR image straight off the camera is quite low, in fact even lower than of a visible-light image,  and the greyish middle tones need to be pushed and the shadows pulled back quite a bit to add sparkle to the picture.

[Knut S]

Thanks for your opinions. I guess I'm am a little afraid to "overdo" editing. 

[Bjørn Rørslett]

Understandable position Knut, but 'under'doing is perhaps even worse?

Do remember that for IR, even fewer rules are set in stone than elsewhere in the various fields of photography ... We should care more for the outcome than the road taken to get there.

[Knut S]

Bjørn, I see your point. The end result is of course what matters, and the road there doesn't matter. When I look at some of your pictures I realize that the road of editing sometimes is a mystery, and the result fascinating.   This has more ir-look, crisp/clarity-wise. Both taken with my D200 with 665-filter. I tend to like the 720-files better. I have a retired D2x that is soon going on a jurney to LifePixel..

[Bjørn Rørslett]

I admit preferring this approach over the previous one ....

The patches of grass and vegetation on the mountain slopes still could be depicted brighter, though, as they are well known to be highly IR-reflective.

[Jakov Minić]

I like this third one, Knut!
I believe that it is a better photo not only because of the higher contrast
I agree with Bjorn the grass and vegetation is usually blown away in my images. Did you underexpose these shots initially, preventing burning out the grass??

[Knut S]

Jakov, I'm so tired of overexposed ir-pictures. A lot of bad language in front of the computer has been a result of inaccuracy when shooting ir.  So the answer is YES. I try not to blow out vegetation.. So to speak..

[Bjørn Rørslett]

Bad language in front of a monitor may result in bad pictures. After all you are being monitored as it were (...).

Joke aside, what kind of conversion software do you use? PhotoNinja can extract a surprising amount of information from what most programs consider hopelessly blown highlight.

Another tip is using a visible-light camera (or hand-held light meter)  to read a good exposure of the scene, then expose your IR camera 1 stop more than this reading. This tends to work because IR is about the same level of brightness as visible light, but the required filtration makes the IR camera less responding to this spectral range. Try it as a starting point just to see how the exposures pan out. Do note this applies to daylight. When artificial lights prevail, fluorescent lights are bad for IR whilst incandescent bulbs are good. In either case the visible light range is not useful for arriving at a good exposure setting.

The final hint is setting the w/b of the IR camera to "incandescent" or the lowest possible Kelvin degree. Again this is merely to get a more reliable histogram because the most of IR is recorded in the red channel. Or if the camera allows, set it to record/display in b/w (only recommended if you can get the full "colour" RAW file from what the camera actually records).

[Bjørn Rørslett]

I do NOT want to hijack your present thread, Knut, so posting an IR of my own taken from more or less the same location here http://nikongear.net/revival/index.php/topic,2799.msg43547.html#msg43547.

This is to illustrate that IR comprise so many things, all at once, and no approach is better or more "correct" than another.

B/w renditions can sometimes work surprisingly well in IR. At other times, a dash of false colours is just the spice needed.