Master Digital Infrared Photography With Your Nikon Digital SLR

The Nikon D70 SLR is ideally suited to Digital Infrared Photography mainly due to the power of its custom settings. I’m going to take a few moments to show you what camera settings I use for my digital infrared photos and hopefully help you get the best results from your Nikon digital SLR.

Nikon D70 Digital SLR Camera

First thing – get a tripod

Next, take some time to plan your digital infrared photograph.

Image Type

For digital infrared photography I really prefer to shoot in RAW mode.

ISO

Good results can be achieved by increasing the ISO setting, but I’ve had the best results when I leave it at 200. I also do a fair amount of post processing in Photo shop , so noise is a problem when working at higher magnifications. Remember, unlike infrared film, where the graininess is part of the look and feel of the image, digital infrared “grain” or noise really degrades your image.

White Balance

In my experience, setting a custom white balance is a key to GOOD Digital Infrared Photography with the Nikon d70. Since foliage reflects IR light, making it the brightest, whitest part of your photo, you’ll need to “calibrate” your D70 to let it know that visible light green is equal to infrared white.

There are a couple of ways to do this:

NUMBER 1: The simplest white balance method using the D70 is to open your menu, use the control button to flip down to the white balance setting, and change it to fluorescent +3. Since for infrared photography you’ll be most likely shooting in bright sunlight with a “red” filter, adding some false color correction in the camera, seems to give your final IR images more “punch.”

NUMBER 2: Another way to adjust white balance for digital infrared photography with the Nikon D70 is to take a photo of green grass at midday in full sun. Now, in your menu, you’ll set the white balance from this photo. So, go to your menu, select white balance, >preset> use photo>select image> use your control dial to navigate to the image of the grass (hopefully it is the only one on your card to make it easy). Now you’re ready to shoot infrared!

Executive Summary about Nikon Digital SLR by Dave Simpson

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