TraceyG wrote:
LOL...no I didn't, I'm not even sure what I should do in editing...care to share?
Tracey,
Congratulations on joining the IR club! Here is a except from an email to another Hedgehoggian on how to process for B&W IR. It uses Elements but it shouldn't be too hard to jump it over to CS5:
I use an Hoya R72 which lets light in at the 720 nm wavelength, it is a deep, dark red.
Do the pictures taken this way come out red, or does the IR shooting take care of this? The photos do come out red. For a while I set my camera to B&W capture mode but I found I got better looking photos, increased contrast and tonal range, shooting in color and then desaturating color during PP in Elements. I just go to Enhance>Adjust Color>Remove Color, I am using Elements v. 2.0. I have seen articles in the photo mags that run through several steps to desat, way too much work, the above works for me just fine. After that I crop, adjust Levels (& Curves too if needed, the histogram is usually a centered mountain and both darks and lights need to be brought in from the edges), sharpen a bit and save the image, that's it! Very simple, very easy.
When I shoot IR, I put the R72 filter over the lens, switch the camera to
Spot Metering (if it is not there already, I use spot metering a lot to keep from blowing highlights in both visible light and IR) and meter off of the brightest part of the image and use the AEL button to lock exposure. Then I recompose the shot and capture the image. I HATE BLOWN HIGHLIGHTS ESPECIALLY IN IR, everybody has a photo pet peeve and that is mine. By using spot metering and locking the exposure in the brightest part of the image you can eliminate blown highlights 99% of the time, it is easy and it works. To me consistently blown highlights (we all blow highlights on occasion, but most of the time?! Unacceptable!) tells me the shooter doesn't know what the heck they are doing. There is no IR capture setting on the camera, just screw on the R72 and you are good to go.
Let me know if you have any other questions.
Looking forward to more from you soon,
Eric
ps here's an old vertical IR pano of a really big tree near my house.