Infrared Filters From Singh-Ray Filters

I love infrared photos but somehow I never seemed to get around to having an old camera converted to infrared.  So earlier this year I got an email ad from Singh-Ray Filters advertising their infrared filter.  My hand grabbed my computer mouse without my will and order the filter.  Before I knew it, Singh-Ray’s IR 690 filter was heading to my doorstep.

The filter arrived, I read some articles online, and then went out to give it a try.  The photos came out RED.  Yep, they were red but they were supposed to be red.

The articles I read said that the photos out of the camera would be red.  I was then supposed to process with method #1, method #2, or method #3 to get an infrared image.

I tried all the methods and simply had a black-and-white image.  No snowy-white grass or grass that look so great in infrared photos.  I could never get anything that even remotely looked like infrared.

Out of frustration, I sent an email to the folks at Singh-Ray Filters.  I got an immediate response and they put me in touch with one of their experts.  That man and I exchanged photos and emails for the next two weeks.  I shot photos with the filter, processed them per his instructions, but nothing worked.  He paid for me to ship my filter to him so he could use it on his camera.

In the end, we found that my Canon 5D Mark IV and my Canon Rebel need a Singh-Ray 830 Infrared filter.  The IR 690 filter only yields a black-and-white image after processing.

Mystery solved.  Singh-Ray Filters immediately shipped me an 830 Infrared Filter and issued a credit for my 690 IR filter once they received it.

Thanks to the great customer service at Singh-Ray Filters I’m now shooting infrared photos and loving my 830 Infrared filter.

By the way, the IR 690 filter works fine on Nikon camera.  We found this situation only applies to Canon cameras.

Here’s how to take a photo with the 830 Infrared Filter:

1. Set the camera to the Bulb exposure mode and decide which f/stop you’ll use.
2. Frame the shot and focus the lens.
3. Turn off auto-focus on the lens.
4. Screw the filter on the lens without moving the focus ring.
   1. You can’t see through the IR filters.
5. With the camera in Bulb
   1. Take the photo with the shutter open for about 4-minute.
   2. Adjust based on the histogram.  A bit less time if the photo is too bright or a bit more time if the photo is too dark.

Here’s my method for processing photos taken with the 830 Infrared Filter:

1. Open in Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom
2. Open Hue Saturation Luminance
   1. Move the red Luminance slider all the way to the right
   2. Move the red Saturation slider all the way to the left
   3. This gets rid of the red cast to the photo
3. Go back to the Basic Tab
   1. Move the Exposure slider so the histogram hits the right corner
   2. Move the Black slider so the histogram hits the left corner
   3. Add some Contrast
4. Continue processing to taste

I’ve just begun shooting in infrared and processing those photos.  Stay tuned.  More discoveries in store.

Author: kathyadamsclark

Professional photographer leading workshops and tours. View all posts by kathyadamsclark