Infrared and snow

[mtngal]

While playing around with infrared a couple of months ago, I wanted to see what snow would look like on trees, when taken with the IR filter. This isn't a very good picture, but I thought it was interesting. Rather than convert it to black and white, I used channel mixer, then made the red channel 0 for red and 100% for blue, then took the blue channel and made it 0 for blue and 100% for red, leaving the green channel alone. It better differentiated the pine needles from the snow. And it shows that while snow probably has little reflected IR light, something that's light will still be light with an IR filter.



While a couple of my IR shots have been fun, for the most part I've had trouble figuring out what will work and what won't. I think the urban scene I posted before has been my best one.

[calr]

It is hard to tell that this is an IR shot. I think snow or anything else that is bright white would have a high reflectivity for IR. If I am right, snow would appear white whether or not the IR filter was used.

Now, in the case of IR film, I think snow would appear dark since it is cold and does not radiate much heat.

Cal

[mtngal]

If you look closely enough you can see the pine needles are almost white, rather than dark, that's about the only clue that it is IR. I haven't tried IR film so have no idea what differences there would be. I'm really just fooling around occasionally with it, it's been interesting.

[pbjunkiee]

IR film doesn't detect heat, all it detects is infrared light, you need thermal film to detect heat, and that is a WHOLE OTHER ball game.