I'll kick off by jumping in at the deep end and recommend Life Pixel for those of you who already know that you want to get serious about handheld digital infrared photography.
This will most probably be one of the most worrying decisions you'll ever make with regards to modifying an existing and much loved piece of photographic equipment - your reliable digital SLR (or compact camera).
It must be getting on for nearly 2 years now since I started scouring the internet for such a service and amongst the dozens I found and researched, Life Pixel offered, what appeared to me, as being the most comprehensive digital camera infrared modification service available.
I contacted them via e-mail and 'phone, just to get a better sense of who would be handling my beloved digital camera equipment and immediately, my mind was put at rest - they assured me that my Canon EOS would be looked after as if it were their very own.
I'm a big fan of Canon EOS camera bodies and although they'd accept a Canon EOS 10D, which is one of my main digi camera bodies, I also had a spare Canon EOS 350D which was sitting around in a cupboard (collecting dust - a digi photographers worst nightmare).
You've guessed it, I packaged up the 350D for the digital camera conversion - next time I'd see the digital camera body it would be a dedicated black and white digital infrared camera.
A few weeks later, the anticipation was over, the well packaged piece of IR kit was now firmly back in my hands and my first port of call was a local pond surrounded by trees (in the most brilliant and strong sunlight).
The first batch of shots I captured in the JPEG format on the highest quality setting that the camera allowed ... I'd taken a custom white balance by pointing the camera to the grass foreground and set that for all my preceding captures.
Metering was as suggested by the digital IR camera but I did bracket on a few shots to see how the images appeared on screen - when I would get them into Adobe PhotoShop.
It was absolutely brilliant - obtaining infra-red digital images without the need for a tripod or alternative camera support.
For those of you already in the know, being able to work without an opaque filter on the front of the lens was a godsend - anyone knew to this field will soon read in a follow-up posting that opaque filters actually block out most of the visible light thereby allowing the invisible light to enter through the lens ... this allows for auto focus and / or manual focusing without the need to add the filter after composition has been made.
Another great thing about using the dedicated digital infra-red SLR is that you don't have the extremely long exposure times which are also associated with using the likes of R72 filters.
Quite simply, their work is great and I can personally highly recommend their pre-sales and after sales service.
Enjoy Digital IR Photography
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