Looks great doesn’t it? Folk invariably love the look and feel of photographs made with infra-red films, the surreal or ghostly look fascinates the human psyche and even sells the odd print or two!
The above and below galleries shot with the late lamented Efke Aura 820 on medium format.
A film I loved, could be grainy but I got around by developing it in Ilford Microphen 1+3 for 23 minutes.
Lovely!
So How Does it Work?
Sadly that particular film met it’s demise when the factory closed, but there are others as we shall see later on.
Black & White IR films pretty much work in the exact same way. Their emulsions formulated to be sensitve futher into the spectrum so that they encompass that wavelength.
They’ll work nicely as normal black and white films, capturing all the frequencies that our eye can see but…by adding the appropriate filter to block visible light, the infra-red spectrum gets through to expose the film.
Got it?
I liked that film, got a few terrific results with it, here are my own personal two favourites shot on Rollieflex 2.8f Planar…the beach scene shot in Normandy, I’m told that there are five ghosts in there somewhere, see if you can find them I can’t!
All the Leaves are Green…
Foliage you see, chlorophyl reflects infra-red light like a good ‘un and that is part of the secret to making enigmatic photographs with these films.
Ssshh….but to be honest, IR is realli a bit of a cheat! Get the right combination and you can turn a normally mundane scene into something special. For black and white three things work great:
- Leaves and foliage to make a scene “pop”
- Wood. Tree bark absorbs IR so provides contrast.
- Water, it just works!
- Blue skies with fluffly white clouds work beautifully but overcast skies can come out really dramatic. More so than using orange, red or polariser with normal films.
Same applies to colour infra-red. Yes that’s correct, not all IR films are/were black and white!
Seeing Red
Colour Infra-Red was really used within the aviation industry. Fitted to cameras that were fitted to aircraft that could fly really really high up in the atmosphere to reord swathes of land, the dyes formualted to identify foliation and such. A task now adopted by satellite imagery.
Let’s take a quick look…
The above shot on the fabled Kodak EIR Aerochrome, or Ektachrome Infra-Red.
Not 35mm though. 120 roll film spliced from 5″ rolls that were sourced from the aviation industry, the final batches acquired by our mate Dean, then skillfully cut and spooled
In use EIR was a bugger to get right, to expose properly much more difficult than “normal” slide fims.
This positve film worked by using three emulsion layers sensitive to green, red, and infra-red light (instead of blue, green, and red) to create “false-colour” images.
Shot from behind a yellow filter to keep out UV and blue light, when you got it right it was magnificent!
The button below (sorry the site did something I can’t figure here so click the shape instead!) will take you to an interesting, scientific PDF about this film.
It was the only film I can recall, that was recommended to be kept frozen, it had a relatively short shelf life even then. The last batch made in 2009 I think, expiry of 2013…
EIR Aerochrome would lose it’s best qualities pretty quicky after that date as we’ll see below hence I do not recommend anyone paying the £100 plus people are asking for these now as results are unlikely to be great.
Not great are they? Disapointing to say the least as it wasn’t cheap to acquire!
Presenting a much better chance of providing results and also acquired from Dean was Kodak CIR, a C41 colour infra-red negative film that was much more forgiving, also shot from behind a yellow filter it was so much easier to use therefore, despite being long outdated.
Only proviso was that it was best to hand develop CIR since many C41 minilabs have internal infra-red sensors that would expose the film during processing.
I loved it a lot, so looky here:
I’m showing these in two galleries, the above shot here in Folkestone, the below around the cemeteries of Caen in Normandy.
So that folks, sadly, was the tail end of colour infra-red.
There is however a consolation prize in the form of Lomo Purple which required no filter and could provide different results by varying the asa setting on your camera.
The first set in this gallery shot on 120 metered at 320asa the second part, the square ones made from a roll cut down and spooled 127, shot in Perugia using a Baby Rollei…I think metered at 250asa or something like that if memory serves.
Back to Black (and White!)
Coming up to date now, there are a few IR sensitive products out there that are readily available…click a photo if you want to buy some to try some!
Ilford SFX I have only used as a normal film so I can’t advise you but I will say that it’s beautiful. It’s not as fully IR sensitive as the Rollei Infra-Red but still a very good option, I also can’t report back on Superpan nor Retro 80S as not used them for IR but again, wonderful films.
If you see Kodak High Speed Infra-Red being hawked around, like the colour IR films be wary…it will be so long in the tooth it may not do you so well so. It was also VERY IR sensitive so needed handling with consideration, loading in low light and to a camera sitha smooth rather than a textured pressure plate.
Best to stick with fresh stocks so let’s look at what we know works in the form of the brilliant Rollei IR400.
Rollei (ing) Backl the Years!
I’ll do this in three runs to make it more paletable!
It’s a gorgeous film. Originally made and branded Maco Eagle, it’s original purpose in life was in speed cameras! Yes, true story…
At first I was a bit nervous about using it, silly boy!
As you can see it’s finer grain than the Efke and offers lovely smooth tonality, the level of grain adding to the sharpness required to capture evidentual detal of little red and white Belgian number plates on the autobahns perhaps? 😀
Here’s some panoramics made on Fuji TX-1, a magnificent camera with a killer lens, for IR work, great, because it’s a rangefinder so the filter does not osbcure the viewfinder!
Click on any photo in this article to view photographs properly, but I guess you’ve establishe that by now.
See the one here to the left too…
How to: Advice, Hints & Tips…
First you’ll need the right filter, don’t go big on numbers here, getting one with too high a block will prevent anything at all reaching your leaving you with a blank!
At Nik & Trick we offer the optimum for this purpoe: 720nm IR filters by Kood which are of great quality and do the job just perfectly thank you very muchly!
In practice they make about four stops difference so, here’s a procedure for you:
With the filter off, frame your scene, set light meter to 12 to 25asa. Fit the filter then shoot at that setting. If you’re not using a rangefinder then you may well need a tripod but….
With SLR if you hold your eye tight to the finder and wait for your own iris to adapt then it is often possible to make out enough to frame and shoot without.
Processing
I strongly highly particularly recommend Ornano Nucleol BF200, or the lovely Gradual ST20 each of which gives a development time of 12 1/2 minutes at the relevant dilutions.
Although the b&w films mentioned here develop in a wide variety of products, these two, especially Nucleol, really do make the IR aura “pop” and keep grain low.
End!
So there you have it, a bunch of words and photos and experience that I hope you’ve enjoyed….thank you for your patience!
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