Camera: Sony A7SII (Full Spectrum Converted)
Lens: Voigtlander Classic 35mm f/1.4 S.C.
There’s something wonderfully awesome about wandering about with a camera that sees way way more light than I can! This photo (and the others like it) Is taken with my Full Spectrum Converted Sony A7Sii.
This camera see’s ALL the light!
Actually all cameras see all of the light! We just add filters in to narrow it down mostly to the visible spectrum…. Maybe I am getting ahead of myself here… What are you talking about!?
The electromagnetic spectrum runs from very short wavelengths (gamma rays, X-rays) to very long ones (radio waves) which is odd to think that I work in a visual medium that stretches all the way into the audio realm. There is a joke in here about a face for radio or something.
Visible light sits roughly between the violet end at 380nm to 700nm which is red at the long end and all the colours that we know live in-between them and then just beyond red is near-infrared (NIR), which is from about 700nm to 1200nm. This is the zone digital Infrared photography lives in.
Human eyes can’t see beyond the 700nm or so but most camera sensors can. The camera manufacturers put filters in place (called a hot mirror or IR-cut filter) specifically to block out all light that isn’t in that 380-700 range so our camera see the same things that our eyes do. Now a full spectrum conversion just removes that filter and lets the camera sensor see all the way from UV to visible to the near infrared all at once.
Then by adding different filters in-front of the sensor we can control what areas of the spectrum can be seen.
One of my favourite is
North Van starts looking like some lost sci-fi dream sequence. But then you get into IR Chrome and Aerochrome-style work and things get even stranger. Greens shift toward red, foliage starts looking radioactive, and regular everyday places suddenly feel like alternate dimensions hiding inside suburbia. It’s less about documenting reality and more about uncovering this parallel version of the world that’s apparently been sitting there the whole time quietly screaming in infrared.