I’m trying to teach myself to take 35mm infrared photographs, and the starting place was Ilford-photo’s guide to shooting infrared film. It’s available with a quick google search, and it basically suggests that on a bright sunny day with a 720nm filter: bracket exposures from a starting a shutter speed of 1 second and aperture of f/8. As well as this, the other advice I had was to let the little Pentax light meter guide me: to see what the settings were without the IR filter, add the filter, then move the shutter speed 6 stops to allow for the reduction in light reaching the film. I tried variations on both of these, and made recordings of my settings to help me learn.
Increasingly washed out, the longer the duration of the exposure the less detail is visible. In this group I was following the Ilford guide of bracketing 1 sec shutter speed with an aperture of f/8. I tried to adjust the focus too, using the red infrared line on the lens, but there was a slight breeze and I think the flower was moving. However, for a first set of infrared photographs, I love that the difference between the background foliage is so clear.
I have the same story with a landscape photograph, I think they’re all washed out. However it seems like infrared film is a great way to take Christmas photographs in the summer time – the fields look snow covered. (Remember the blizzard of summer 2024)
While I was waiting for a narrow canal boat to come through a lock gate I tried some more photographs but they were boring, the scene didn’t work as a photograph let alone infrared. Once the canal boat was through I took some more, and again I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve been taking deep winter photographs.
Back in Slaithwaite village, the church and pub were framed by trees and the sky was clearing a bit. I thought I might get a good shot with a black sky and bright trees… I loved the way the solar panels got darker, but the composition of these photographs made it hard work, the foreground trees become clearer as the background trees become washed out. It was a good way to remove the empty flagpole from the top of the tower though.
What have I learned? The next time I try this I will bracket differently, and I will also give more thought to the composition. I was teaching myself through play, and because that was what I was trying to do I’m quite happy with these photographs: I genuinely feel like I learned. So this last image was my favourite, because it was a throw-away last shot of the roll. I popped the camera on a tripod and shot a view from my front garden across the valley.
All photographs taken with Rollei IR 200 to 400 ISO film (set at 200 ISO on the camera) on a sunny day in August, with a tripod mounted Pentax MX, SMC 50mm f/1.4 lens and Hoya 720nm filter (where used).