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With the NEX-7 through Norway
Ralph Altmann is a photographer and journalist and works as a freelance author for the magazine c't Digitale Fotografie. This year he was traveling in Norway with an undefined converted Sony NEX 7.
A Sony Nex-7 with the IR cut filter removed accompanied me on a trip through Norway in August. This "undefined" conversion makes it possible to take both normal color photos and IR photos. For the normal photos, an IR cut filter is placed in front of the lens (I used B+W 486 UV IR cut from Schneider Kreuznach), for the IR photos an IR pass filter is used to block out the visible light. Here I mostly used the "092 infrared filter 695" also from B+W. The electronic viewfinder of the Nex-7 proved to be very helpful when taking pictures, because when the sun is low behind you, you can hardly see anything on the display. In addition, the user-defined white balance also works in the IR range, so that you don't see a strong red cast in the viewfinder, but a quasi-greyscale image, which is easy to judge.
Depending on the subject, I later convert the IR photos into black and white images on the computer or - with channel swapping and some post-processing - into color images. You don't get really natural colors, but often very atmospheric images. In order to combine the advantages of the IR photo, for example the good visibility and high contrast, with the usual colors, you have to take an IR photo and a normal photo of the same subject and combine them later. This was relatively easy to achieve with the modified Nex-7 by simply changing the filter. An example of the hyper-realistic look that can be achieved with this technique can be found at the end of the picture series. In the current issue of c't Digitale Fotografie (issue 6/2016), I explain everything you need to know about the shooting technique and post-processing with Lightroom and Photoshop.
Text and photos ©Ralph Altmann. A current report on IR photography can be found in the current c't Digital Photography has been published. You can find more photos, articles on photography and image editing and useful tools here:
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