Cameras

Infrared (IR) images on my site were either taken with a modified Canon G2 or with a Canon Rebel XTi. The modified G2 was the first camera I used for IR photography and the conversion process was somewhat tricky but it went smoothly. The internal IR blocking filter was replaced with a 6mm thick piece of clear glass. I wanted the freedom of having a digital SLR camera for IR photography so my newest camera is the Rebel XTi, and I am very pleased with its performance.

File Format

All my IR shots are taken in RAW mode. To download off the CF card and to organize the IR photos, I use Adobe Bridge 2.1.0.1 to organize photos but use Adobe Lightroom 1.4 to "develop" the photos. I find Lightroom saves time when developing large numbers but it's stability on a Windows platform very bad and hope the Adobe address this issue.

Basically, the CCD of the camera captures all information about the image in 16 bit color depth. There are many advantages to shooting in RAW mode, almost too many to explain. An added advantage to RAW mode is the ability to batch process images, change white balance, color balance, color hue balance, sharpness and noise reduction. The best part of RAW mode is that it is a nondestructive type of photo editing, which means that at any point you can return to the original image captured by the camera.

Output

I use the corrected RAW images as a "digital negatives" to output to various resolutions. For web images, I save them as jpg, 1.6 MP at 72dpi, 8 Bits/Channel and sRGB IEC61966-2.1 color space. For printing, images are output at 250 dpi in tiff uncompressed, 11.2 MP and same color space as above.

Color Digital Photography Workflow

The camera I use is a Canon 20D and as explained in my IR workflow, I follow the same basic workflow as described for the IR work. All my photography is shot in digital format, 90% of it is taken in RAW mode. The only time I use a high setting in JPG mode is when I shoot sports. Yes, it is a lot of work developing the images, but I find it a minor issue when you think of all that can be done with a RAW image. It is also possible to do batch processing in Adobe(tm) RAW. I've developed up to 60 photos at one time.