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How Easy It Is, And Why It Is A Cut Above Film Old vs. New
I came from the ‘old school’ of photography, you know, Paterson tanks, TMax developer, cutting negatives, then onto the enlarger and into trays of Edwal developer, stop bath and fixer. I loved the smell of the darkroom actually; it was somehow ‘peaceful’ and welcoming during my early college days.
Over the course of several years I experimented with all sorts of film shooting and processing. There were a few choices, well, not that many, but enough to keep a darkroom junkie like me fairly happy. One of those choices was black and white infrared film. Basically, infrared film forces a non-digital camera to measure heat as opposed to light. Infrared black and white films have enabled photographers to create very artistic, ethereal-looking images that can be exceptionally stunning to look at. Of course it helps to choose interesting subjects to photograph with black and white infrared, anything with green trees in it works well, as the chlorophyll gives off a white, eerie appearance provided there is ample available sunlight. Certain buildings make wonderful subjects as well; my niche turned out to be southwestern ghost towns.
An example of one of my first infrared film photos is below, and was captured with my old manual Minolta XD11film camera, Kodak Infrared B/W film, exposed at f22 at 1/125, focused on the infrared mark on my Minolta 50mm lens. It was 100 degrees that day at Berlin, a ghost town in northern central Nevada, and I had my IR film in my camera inside an ice chest filled with dry ice, or the heat would have ‘killed’ it: In post-processing, I physically printed this from a negative down to fiber based photographic paper, and then hand colored it using photo toning paints. Start to finish, it was a lengthy, cumbersome process at best!
 However, as beautiful and wonderful as shooting infrared film was, with every rose comes a thorn, there are several ‘thorny’ drawbacks to shooting infrared film as opposed to capturing infrared with a digital camera. First of all, shooting infrared film is punishingly time-consuming. Considering the current digital technology, “conventional” infrared photography is seriously costly, wasteful, inconvenient, and difficult to process correctly. I know once I made the switch from film to digital, it was like I had been set free. The ‘mucking about’ in complete and utter darkness trying to load infrared film after I had iced my hands down to cool off my body temperature (so as not to fog the film), is something I just don’t miss for some reason. I also don’t miss lugging my camera around the desert inside a plastic bag in a cooler full of dry ice (again so as not to fog the film), then hurrying up to get it loaded onto a reel and into a tank for developing. When I look back at the time, hassle and expense digital film cost me, I really must have been obsessed!
Overnight Sensation
Seemingly overnight, digital cameras became ‘serious’ contenders for film cameras. At this point, I became convinced of how much time and money I was wasting. I received a Sony Cybershot F-707 camera for a Christmas present in the early 2000s, and I was literally set free. I had found the ‘Holy Grail’ of infrared after discovering the camera had a ‘Night Shot’ mode which enabled me to slap a couple of filters on my lens and with the flip of a switch, voila! No more messing about with finicky film that might or might not have been properly exposed or processed. No more spending $20 to $30 bucks a roll for IR film. It was amazing. Just by placing two filters (an NDX2 and an 80A Infrared filter) on my digital camera lens, and then flipping a switch into “Night Shot” mode, I was instantly transported to the land of infrared with absolutely no second thought or fuss. I was a bit skeptical of course, I mean, how ‘good’ could the digital infrared photos I captured be? I laid that fear to rest the very first day. Below is one of the first digital infrared photos I captured, with a little post-processing in Adobe Photoshop. This next photo was captured with my Sony F717 Cybershot digital camera on the "Night Shot" setting with the two filters mentioned above on the lens. My settings were 'auto' which worked out perfectly. Once uploaded to my computer, I post-processed this photo using Auto-Levels and then a plug-in filter from Flaming Pear Software called "Wavy Color" which gave it a bit of an 'etherial' feel and some dynamic colorization. So easy, start to finish less than 20 minutes tops (this included shooting the photo).
In barely an instant, gone was the inconvenient necessity to cool my hands down with an ice pack in order to handle infrared film long enough to load it in the complete darkness of a closet. Gone was the next step in the old time-consuming procedure, which consisted of placing my non-digital camera in a re-sealable plastic bag, and then into an ice chest filled with ice packs or dry ice. Unless I was shooting in a place like Alaska in winter, or the North Pole, I had to work hard to keep that camera cool, or the heat-sensitive infrared film would fog due to the heat. Oh and did I mention Focus? Infrared film is notorious for having to be shot using the infrared mark on standard lenses. That is if one’s camera even had such a mark! Most of the time it was a guessing game as to how far to ‘back off’ the focus from infinity to compensate for the focusing of a film that is driven by heat as opposed to light. It was a blindfolded crap shoot basically, I just never knew if a frame was going to be focused sharply enough. Gone! No more even thinking about all of this stuff now that I had ‘gone digital.’ One of the greatest benefits as far as I was concerned was the fact that I could now shoot hundreds of digital infrared photos as opposed to the measly 20 or so that film afforded me. Hundreds! Let me say that again…HUNDREDS!
The Quality Issue – Is There A Downside To Digital?
It was just too good to believe, and then it hit me, “What if the quality isn’t as good?” It is really hard to beat ‘analog’ film for some subjects. I was proven wrong so quickly. From the minute I had shot my first 50 frames of infrared and had uploaded them to my computer, and then done a little ‘magic’ in Adobe Photoshop, my fears were over. I probably had never experienced ‘instant gratification’ photographically speaking as I did after uploading and post-processing my first Memory Stick full of infrared shots. I was literally like a kid in a candy store. Just the absolute clarity and contrast of these ‘raw’ files straight from my camera were astounding to me. Yes, they were a bit ‘bright’ at this stage, but just performing “Auto Levels” in Photoshop altered the brightness and contrast to practical perfection. I was just over the moon really. I never would have thought that I could accomplish this kind of ethereal beauty so effortlessly. Here is another example from that first batch of digital infrared (with a little extra post-processing in Photoshop similar to the first digital IR image above).
What is a slight difference is that I did not get much, if any, lens flare from certain bright subjects in direct sunlight like I would from infrared film. That’s “it,” the only difference I personally have encountered since switching to digital infrared. I don’t miss it really. The ethereal quality is still there, and really, the sharp focus and clarity of my images more than makes up for losing a tiny bit of lens flare. Plus, who is to say I won’t eventually capture some sort of incredible lens flare during the right shooting scenario in the future? Below is an example of a digital infrared image with absolutely the minimum levels and contrast adjustment in Photoshop. This was captured, as were the others, with my Sony F707 Cybershot, on automatic settings in "Night Shot" mode. Simple and effective!
Wrapping Up
An interesting ‘side’ facet of digital infrared photography is that in “Night Shot” mode, the digital information isn’t necessarily black and white, in fact, it’s really not, and when you first upload the digital images, you get the sense of an almost ‘sepia’ tone in the raw data. So, once the post-processing ensues in Photoshop, you do have the choice of ‘desaturating’ your image and making it a true black and white infrared image. However, I have found that I love experimenting with the different color schemes and filter options in Photoshop in order to create exciting and sometimes bizarre infrared compositions. But that’s another installment in this interesting conversation about digital infrared photography…You’ll just have to come back again and read more about it as we explore the world of digital infrared together in future articles!
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