Infrared Photography

I have been playing with my new Sony video camera. Funny thing is, so far I have only played with the ordinary photograph function.

With ordinary digital cameras, they all have a video function these days, and in my experience the quality is quite good even on cheaper cameras. It is the sound with video that tends to be poor on these cameras. It turns out that specialist video cameras also have a function to take normal photographs, and I have discovered (at least on my Sony video camera) these are also of a high standard. The photographs also have the benefit of some of the video camera's unique functions, like continuous light (different to a flash) and infrared.

Above is the same shot, of my bookshelf in a room that is almost dark with just a little ambient light. The first is taken with an ordinary camera on automatic with no flash (pretty much all black), the second is an ordinary camera with flash, and the third is my good Nikon with no flash but using its settings to maximize the light that is available.

Below is the same shot using infrared. There is no flash and no lights, just an infrared beam that comes out of the front of the camera and is not visible to the human eye. This is an interesting option that can take a photograph (or a video) in complete darkness.

This also shows what a good job the Nikon did with so little light. However, if the ambient light was removed and there was total darkness the infrared would still have worked. Now I'm looking forward to taking some movies. I bought this particular video camera because it has three levels of sound options, and I really hope the sound quality will be high and match the high definition video.

Comments

[Jos]

That infrared looks like something from a horror movie

[Paul]

I don't think its pixellated, I just think there is a limit to the detail that is detected on the camera sensor using the infrared beam. Apparently it works "because of the IR sensitivity of the camcorder's CCD detector and since Sony installed an infrared light source in the camcorder, infrared illumination was available to augment otherwise low-light video scenes and produce reasonable image quality in low-light situations". Perhaps this explains it better: "When you flip the switch to Nightshot mode, little IR LED Emitters built into the camera turn on, and bathe the scene in IR light. The camera moves the IR Block Filter from in front of the sensor, and adjusts the focus for IR light wavelengths. The result is an image taken in IR Light. You get a greenish image similar to the old Military Night Vision glasses".

[PythonMagus]

The infrared seems to be very pixellated. Is that a function of the software of on the camera? (That is, to maximise light capture, it treats a few hundred pixels as one.)