Colour Infrared Video Imagery

I’ve been experimenting with colour infrared video and photography for some time, photography is easier due to the IR blocking filter on my stills camera being quite weak, plus manipulating RAW images in Photoshop and Gimp using  colour channel swapping is very effective. However video is another matter entirely, the IR blocking filter on my Canon HV40 is quite strong so filming on very bright sunny days is essential, then manipulating the imagery in After Effects can be long and unpredictable, film grain/noise needs to be removed, channel swapping in video is not very clean so many more effects are needed to produce a ‘respectable’ clip.

I’ve put some IR video clips together in this edit to give you an idea of what can be achieved.

Here is a November desktop wallpaper for you, it was shot at the Lea Valley river in East London using a Nikon D70 and a Hoya IR filter.

Click on the picture then again to make it bigger then right click and save.

3 Comments Add yours

  1. dkravtsov says:

    Nice, thanks for sharing. What does it look like when shot indoors with and without natural light? Would be interesting if you could share!

    1. Joanne Seale says:

      Hello, I havent tried shooting indoors. I would imagine the light levels would be too low to get though the camera’s IR blocking filter.
      If you used a camera with the filter removed and IR lighting then shooting indoors may work, however this may result in b&w imagery only, or different colours once the blue and red channels are swapped.

Leave a comment