Infrared: Shooting indoors under artificial light.

[Dinarius]

I have a request to shoot infrared images of some fine art objects. The shots would be taken indoors under artificial light.

Apart from buying an infrared filter for the lens (I will not be touching the camera sensor in any way!) what advice can others offer on lighting? Should I use flash or tungsten?

I will be using a camera stand, so exposure times are irrelevant. The camera would be tethered to a laptop.

Any other advice would be appreciated.

Thanks.

D.

[nightfire]

Sensitivity to IR varies considerably among sensors. Therefore, I'd make sure that the intended camera/back provides sufficient infrared response at all. Having used a R72 filter on 3 small cameras so far (Nikon D300, Canon G10, Leica M9), I found that the D300 was unusable, the G10 so-so, while the M9 produced very good results with a strong Wood effect.

Regarding lighting, I only have experience with outdoor IR photography, but I would imagine that flash emits little IR radiation only?

[Dinarius]

Thanks for the reply.

I'm using a Hasselblad 39Mp MS. I tried a couple of outdoor shots with an IR filter. Look ok, though I must confess I'm not totally sure what I'm looking at. It just looks like IR images I've seen online.

My main concern is tungsten or flash indoors for IR photography. If anyone knows the answer I'd be grateful.

Thanks again.

D.

[sniper]

I'm fairly sure tungsten will give out more IR, but it may be worth looking at a proper IR light source if your trying to "see through" paintings etc.

[mahleu]

Flash creates a fair amount of IR although if you don't want anyone to see you can fire it through an IR filter...

Otherwise you can get dedicated IR lights.

Did they specify what range of IR they're looking for?