Infrared Macro Photography

Infrared Macro Photography – Is IR only for landscapes? – Watch on YouTube

We get a lot of questions about Infrared macro photography. It usually comes after we talk about UV photography, and the products we offer to make that possible for macro photographers. We’ve never investigated the possibility of Infrared macro, until now!

What is Infrared Photography?

Before we get too deep into the macro aspect, we need to look at what IR photography is and why it’s so interesting. You’ve probably seen some Infrared images before, they usually come in the form of mesmerising, strange landscape photos. As we have been learning, we have been taking some landscapes of our own, and it’s certainly a captivating technique!

The image above is captured in what’s called Super colour Infrared. The camera captures infrared along with a selection of visible light too, allowing for some creative editing choices that change the colours and feel of the image.

Other kinds of infrared exist too, and it all comes down to a choice of filter. One thing remains the same, the camera has to be converted to become “full spectrum”. This involves sending your camera away to have modifications to allow it to capture Ultraviolet and Infrared wavelengths alongside regular visible light.

We sent an older mirrorless camera away to Life Pixel who sent it back with amazing new capabilities and a couple of filters. One for super colour IR and one to return the camera’s range back to normal, so it can still be used for regular photography too.

Life Pixel specialise in this kind of photography, so if you want to learn more about the options and process of capturing Infrared photos, check out their blog and selection of Infrared filters for different styles of IR processing.

Infrared Lighting

Now, onto why we’re interested in macro. We specialise in macro lighting. We provide lights that are ideal for all kinds of macro, including UV. But what about the other end of the spectrum?

We wanted to see if there is any value in creating some Infrared lighting arms to enable or enhance Infrared photography at a macro scale. So we made some prototypes and we’re putting them to the test.

Of course, you can’t see much from the arms. Just like our UV Lighting Arms, they produce no visible light. So we can’t see that they’re on. Our IR camera tells a different story!

Incidentally, this is what you see on the back of the camera when shooting. Everything is red. there is a process of compensating for the colour temperature, and inverting the image in photoshop that returns the sky to being blue and results in the plants and foliage changing colour too.

Infrared Macro Photography

So what about macro. We put our supercolour filter on the Tokina 100mm f2.8 macro lens and took some distinctly below average shots of a leaf. First in the ambient light in the room, then with added visible light from the Adaptalux studio, and finally with just the IR arms.

We processed them all in the same way we would a landscape shot, adjusting the colour temperature for a white point, in this case the table. Then we invert the image to get that same colour change.

Interestingly, the results differ significantly. The image gets less vibrant and more dull as you move further from natural light. It’s worth noting that this is likely because of the particular filter we’re using combined with the editing. Selecting a white point becomes very tricky when the whole scene is flooded with IR, so selecting the white table each time might account for the dull result as the colour temperature tries to compensate for more and more infrared.

Regardless of the differences here, the results are disappointing. The leaf shows little or no additional detail or contrast, and in fact just looks like a yellow leaf. The colour change of the foliage doesn’t have the same impact as it would in a landscape image where there are other elements to contrast against and a blue sky to trick the eye.

Conclusions

What can we learn from this little experiment? Is Infrared macro photography viable, or a lost cause?

Well it certainly doesn’t have the same immediate impact as an Infrared landscape. The contrast between the sky, odd coloured foliage and colourless elements is what makes the landscapes look so etherial and otherworldly.

Because most macro photography focuses in on a single subject, super close up, there is no contrast between different elements. That’s not to say that every macro photo would result in a less interesting image, but certainly it’s not the same striking first impression. It’s also worth noting that we have only tested with a handful of subjects, flowers, leaf and some man-made objects.

Other than a slight colour change, and general lack of variety in that colour, the difference between a normal photo and an IR photo of the same macro subject is minimal and could easily be achieved by playing with sliders in Photoshop.

So what does this mean for our Infrared Lighting Arms? Well here’s the same photo from before, but processed and inverted like the rest. You can see that the effect works well with the light produced by the arms, and you can see it clearly when you have the surrounding context.

Flood a macro subject with the infrared light though, and all context is lost. Everything is bathed in IR regardless, and this results in either an entirely yellow image, or a dull one when you try to compensate using colour temperature.

We would love to make Infrared Lighting arms. However, it’s hard to see an application for them. If you know of one, get in touch. Comment on the YouTube video or this article. Let us know why you’re asking for them. Perhaps there’s a flaw in our process, or something we’re missing.

For now, we’re putting Infrared macro photography to the side. There’s probably a reason most IR images are landscapes. We’re not closing the book completely, we’re waiting for you to prove us wrong!

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