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27 Apr 2012

LEICA DIGILUX 1 INFRA RED

See the earlier post on Digital Infra Red photography DIGITAL INFRA RED. Modern digital cameras are not suited to infra red photography as the sensors have very low IR sensitivity but the early Leica Digilux 1 digital camera takes surprisingly good infra red images-- if used under ideal circumstances .The sensor in the Digilux is very slow anyway by current standards so with the deep red (almost black) infra red filter on the front of the lens it really struggles in anything other than really bright light and produces very "noisy" images .

I took it out on a short local walk today and came back with these infra red land and seascapes.I find them quite appealing --in their place.
Really I should have used a tripod and set the camera on the lowest ISO setting but it was just a spur of the moment decision to try out the infra red filter which "surfaced" during my mega clean out a couple of weeks back so they were all hand held on the highest( 400) ISO setting.

 Colour TIFF files converted to black and white JPEGs in Adobe Lightroom .The Digilux 1 does not have any facility for taking black and white images.


3 comments:

  1. like them all, great stuff. but the last one is particularly grabbing. looking closely at the water in the forground was quite fun and intriguing. more! maybe with that tripod this time...

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  2. Hello,

    WOW! Great Infra Red photos. I am not sure I understand how you achieved the infra red look. I am going to take a guess. With an infra red filter on the Digilux-1 camera lens you took digital color pictures? They must have looked very reddish? Then you used Adobe to transform the files to B&W thus getting rid of the red tint?

    It was very many years ago but I used infra red film on many occasions.
    Thank you for a very interesting lesson. I graduated, with a diploma, from photography school in 1971. We never stop learning.

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  3. Hello again,

    I was so inspired by this group of photos that I searched out and purchased a Digilux-1. I got the Leica filter attachment. I purchased an R-72 filter. It took a while to assemble my infra red outfit but it was worth it in more ways than one. I can't believe what a joy it is to operate the Digilux-1. All the regular photos are warm and real. The camera is so easy to use. My friends and I are very impressed with all the results and especially the infra red shots. I only have Photoshop but I can easily render glorious infra red pictures. Thank you so much for posting this blog. I haven't had this much fun with photography in a long time.

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