Ben's aunt takes a lot of pictures, so I wanted to get her something photo-related for the upcoming non-denominational winter holiday. I don't know if Jody was even aware of the technique, but something I have always been intrigued with was infrared photography. I first ran across some examples of it it as a kid in the owner's manual of my mom's old Kodak Tourist Camera, and the white foliage and nearly-black skies fired my imagination. But back in the days of film, I never had the wherewithal to actually find the film, buy the necessary filters, and then locate a shop that could develop it. The results could be stunning, but seemed more trouble than they were actually worth.
All that changed with the advent of digital photography, requiring little more than a special filter and engaging the manual settings on the camera.
So I went ahead and ordered the filter for her, thinking it would be a fun diversion for her photos. It arrived today. It's not the size my camera needs, but I decided to test it out as much as I could to see just how involved the whole process would be. No use giving a gift that would be too much trouble to actually use.
It was a lot of trial and error, but I finally got a decent shot. I had to set the camera to record in black and white (if I didn't want pink-tinged photos), manually set the exposure time and aperture, and then use a tripod since the required exposure lengths were well beyond the hand-held, point-and-shoot range—making it completely unacceptable as a gift for Jody.
But I'll have to admit the results were certainly interesting!
So I'll be returning this one for a general-use polarizer (something she also doesn't have) and then get my own IR filter to experiment with further.