Write-up in progress
Back in November ‘09, I started playing around with infrared photography, after learning about a simple modification you can make to a cheap digital camera. I modded a webcam (which I later fed into Quartz Composer to add weird effects) and a cheap handheld digicam, and swapped out the LEDs in a headlamp for IR ones.
Here’s my first post about it (from 2010), and my 2013 write-up on the process.
At the end of 2024, I picked it back up, inspired by the #ShittyCameraChallenge . Inspired by the Bay Area’s many movie palaces (in varying states of survival), I immediately fixated on neon signage.
Posts and photos
merlin / alex glow (@[email protected])
About near-IR:
Most consumer cameras have a filter that cuts out the infrared part of the spectrum – which is invisible to our eyes, but can add weirdness to your photos. The filters don’t cut out all the IR, which is why you can use your phone camera to scan for hidden cameras with infrared LED lighting (which night-vision and security cameras tend to use). Many cheap cameras can easily be modified to shoot almost exclusively in the near-infrared spectrum: not enough to get real thermal imaging, but close enough!
As you’ll see in some of my photos, you get a little bit of thermal vision, while most of the effect involves the distinction between incandescent/neon lighting (hot, visible) and LED lighting (cool, invisible). You also get some strangeness because the dyes we use are tailored to our vision, so your “black” shirt may absorb visible light but reflect IR, making it look white… or even translucent!
Skin and eyes also look strange. You’ll see in a minute. :)
The modding process:
I modded a few different cameras using this method: