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Unusually for me these days I bought a copy of Amateur Photographer magazine last week and even more unusual I was actually inspired by one of the articles. It was about infrared B&W, by Russ Barnes, and featured some superb pictures as well as a description of his shooting techniques and processing workflow.
I've dabbled briefly with infrared in the past and I was sufficiently motivated to purchase a step-up ring to use my under appreciated R72 filter on my current 12-50mm lens.
So far, so good, but I have a problem with following Russ's processing. One of the steps he takes in Photoshop involves changes to the red and blue colour channels using the Channel Mixer. Elements (which I use) doesn't have this function, so can anybody recommend a cheap program that does this? I have seen mentioned online a plug-in called Elements Plus which apparently unlocks "hidden" functions in Elements including the channel mixer, but I cannot find it on the Adobe site. Has anyone used this or heard of it?
One problem that I encountered on my first outing with the filter today was long exposures due to the blocked transmission of light from the visible spectrum. I had a tripod, of course, but that did not prevent the blurring of moving clouds and foliage on a breezy day. I shot at ISO 200 and in retrospect I should have cranked this up. Also, I was maybe a little too cautious in using f8 to accommodate the focussing differential of infrared light. Does anyone have any other tips, advice or comments, please?
Here are two pictures from today. I did up the ISO to 3200 for the second shot.
I've dabbled briefly with infrared in the past and I was sufficiently motivated to purchase a step-up ring to use my under appreciated R72 filter on my current 12-50mm lens.
So far, so good, but I have a problem with following Russ's processing. One of the steps he takes in Photoshop involves changes to the red and blue colour channels using the Channel Mixer. Elements (which I use) doesn't have this function, so can anybody recommend a cheap program that does this? I have seen mentioned online a plug-in called Elements Plus which apparently unlocks "hidden" functions in Elements including the channel mixer, but I cannot find it on the Adobe site. Has anyone used this or heard of it?
One problem that I encountered on my first outing with the filter today was long exposures due to the blocked transmission of light from the visible spectrum. I had a tripod, of course, but that did not prevent the blurring of moving clouds and foliage on a breezy day. I shot at ISO 200 and in retrospect I should have cranked this up. Also, I was maybe a little too cautious in using f8 to accommodate the focussing differential of infrared light. Does anyone have any other tips, advice or comments, please?
Here are two pictures from today. I did up the ISO to 3200 for the second shot.
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