How to check if your photo camera can take infrared photos


Infrared photography has many applications, such as cosmic photos, recovering texts of water damaged documents, quality checks for hidden material flaws, surveillance and public safety, or aesthetic purposes.

You would imagine that you need special equipment to take infrared photos. Well, for the “far” infrared spectrum (thermal light), indeed, you need it. But for the “near” infrared, all you need is a digital camera that doesn’t have a filter that blocks infrared light, and an infrared filter.

How to test your camera for IR capability: check if it can see beams emitted from a common infrared remote control (point it towards your camera and press any button). The beams should appear white in the LCD screen.

photo camera IR check

If your camera does not have an LCD screen, take a picture of the remote control while pressing one of its buttons. In this photo you should see the beam, as illustrated:

IR beam

Otherwise, it means that your camera has the IR blocking filter. Probably it can be removed, but I would not suggest you do that, because it may void your warranty, or you may never manage to put the camera together and functioning again.
If your camera passed the test, and you are looking forward to see your future IR pictures, take a look at these examples of infrared photography.

This entry was written by Simonne posted on March 7, 2007 at 5:09 pm, filed under Hobbies, Photography tips, Tech & Internet and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

5 Comments

  1. Diesel
    Posted March 30, 2007 at 8:59 am | Permalink

    I checked my camera and it can take infrared photos. Thank you for the tip.

  2. ben
    Posted May 16, 2007 at 5:25 pm | Permalink

    So my camera does have IR functionality. Now, what fun stuff can I actually do with it?

  3. Simonne
    Posted May 17, 2007 at 1:45 am | Permalink

    Now you need an IR filter, Hoya R72. You can see an example of IR photo here: http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=007kni

  4. vefseo
    Posted May 23, 2007 at 8:43 pm | Permalink

    Hello! Thank you for your site. I have found here much useful information.
    I’ll be back.

  5. Simonne
    Posted May 24, 2007 at 12:31 am | Permalink

    Thanks for stopping by. You are welcome any time.

2 Trackbacks

  1. By ArsGeek - Free your inner geek » How to Check if Your Camera can Take Infrared Photos on March 8, 2007 at 9:49 am

    [...] Alltipsandtricks has a great article on checking to see if your camera can do the infrared thing. This entry is filed under Just Plain Geek, linkydinks, gadgets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Leave a Reply [...]

  2. By All Tips and Tricks Exposed on April 16, 2007 at 4:44 pm

    [...] March: the post about how to see if your photo camera can take infrared photos was featured on fark (not on the main news page, but on the Science one) - this brought in about [...]

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