Infrared with Rollei ir 400 and Lee 87

[Ester Caty Young]

Hi everyone,
so I have decided to do some experiment with Infrared photography about 2 days ago.
I have already purchased the Lee 87 filter along with the Rollei IR 400 film
and would like to do some long exposures (sea, trees, sunrise, mountains...) with it,
as I like that style of photography very much.

Can anybody who has experiences with this combo, help me, please?
I am using a Hasselblad 530 CW and Sonnar 250 mm.

I am not sure how to meter for Ir photography and compensate this filter?

Is it not similar to ND filters, where one has adjust few stops?
I could not find any info on it and am a bit confused
and would not want to waste an entire roll if I can simply ask for guidance.

Also can I ad some ND filters on top of the Lee 87 ir filter?

Thanks for all your input, advice and guidance. Much appreciated.

 

[Svenedin]

Hello Ester. I have used Rollei Infrared 400 quite a few times, including very recently. If you look in the galleries, under my name you can find some of my IR photos and they include details of the exposure index used.

I have used the Hoya R72 filter which blocks light below a wavelength of 720 nanometres. I believe your Lee 87 starts at 730 nanometres which is broadly similar.

I set the camera meter to EI 12 and had good results on a rangefiner (not metering through the lens). With an SLR I let the camera meter, through the IR filter, with the EI set to 400 which works with my OM4-Ti but will not work with many cameras. The alternative is to use a hand held meter set to EI 12. I have also had good results at EI 25 and 6 but it depends on the light. It is best to bracket your exposures as IR photgraphy is very unpredictable. Always take one frame without a filter at an EI of 400 so that you have a reference to check your development was OK.

I don't know anything about Hasselblads.

You need bright sun for the IR effect to work.

For development I followed the instructions inside the box (Xtol 1:1 for 17 mins) rather than the confusing (and different) information on massive dev chart.

This article may be of use: http://www.maco-photo.de/files/images/ROLLEI INFRARED englisch.pdf

Have fun. Best Wishes, Stephen

 

[AgX]

Welcome to Apug!

"Infrared Photography" is a term that can mean a lot of different things.
Especially in the tonal rendition of subjects. So one can keep the main subject quite unchanged but underexpose other parts strongly (as a blue sky turned to black). Or overexpose some objects strongly (as green leaves turned into snowwhite) and underexpose the rest.

So, first consider what you try to achive and then try to expose corresponding to that. I say "try", as metering is possible, but neccessitates special equipment and calibration.

 

[Ester Caty Young]

Thank you so much for the advice, tips and links guys.
I will try it out and hopefully will get some results.

@Svenedin
That link info is great, thank you.
Since the 87 filter is just about borderline for the film,
I think sticking with el 12 to 6 is gonna be a good starting point and yes, always bracket LOL

I tend to dev in D-76, cause I like it, so will let you know results.

So, just to clarify (lol)...for example is I set my meter for el 12 and it gives me 1/60 at f8
and I wanna do about 5 minutes long exposure, do I have to compensate for the Lee 87,
like one would do for ND, or is there no compensation at all?

I have a reciprocity app, that claims 4 stops for infrared filter 89B, but no info for Lee87 :-(

Thank you again for the help.

 

[Svenedin]

Setting the meter at EI 12 is giving 5 extra stops of exposure (for this film), EI 6 is +6 stops etc. No further compensation is needed -this is the compensation.

If you are going to add a ND filter as well you will have to add that compensation but I have never done long exposures with this film so I don't know how it will behave.

Süd Tyrol IR #1

• Svenedin
• Oct 9, 2016
• 4

Experimenting with the strange and very unpredictable world of IR photography. There was a pool...

March Infrared print #1

• Svenedin
• Jun 9, 2016
• 5

8'x10" print from 6x6 120. Photo taken in March in bright sunny conditions. Also printed on...

Süd Tyrol IR #2

• Svenedin
• Oct 9, 2016

A hill farm. Cattle grazing on a very steep slope. Grass strongly reflecting IR. So strongly in...

View from above Vent, Tirol, Austria (IR)

• Svenedin
• Jul 3, 2016

A difficult to print negative with extreme contrast. The negative looks like a line drawing...

 

[georg16nik]

You can't meter for IR since camera/off-camera meters by default have no sensitivity for IR as per ISO specifications.
Depending on the amount of IR in the atmosphere, Rollei Retro 400 should be OK @ EI 6 or less using a filter which cuts at ~ 700nm.
High altitude and clear sky will give you more IR, meaning that at EI 6 you will get slight blooming effect with this film.
Also, Rollei Retro 400 is not ISO 400 film - the number 400 is a stunt, it's hardly ISO 200 in reality as per ISO standards...
IMHO Rollei Retro 80s is the better film for IR, as it is a bit more sensitive and much more fine grained.

 

[AgX]

You can meter for visible light and then deduce on the IR-light based on the share of IR-on the total lighting, but that needs expertise too.

 

[DWThomas]

Does your App have an "R72"? (I have Reciprocity+, which doesn't appear to have either.) That would get you pretty close, but as others have said, bracket, bracket, bracket! I think it's partly because our eyes just don't see IR, so those "little intuitive adjustments" we sometimes make are no longer available to us. I have shot the Rollei 400IR film (in a Bronica - the poor man's Hasselblad ) using filters with 720 cutoff and 760 cutoff. While the latter can be done, it is way down on the response curve and takes another 5 or 6 stops exposure beyond that for the 720.

(Edit) As AgX suggests, I normally take incident readings of the normal light and then adjust; there is no guarantee that a meter, in camera or out, will respond to IR in any useful way.

I have a few IR projects out in cyberspace. Adding an ND filter will be similar to shooting pinhole -- you may want a folding chair to sit through the exposures.

Good luck!

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

I've been using this film in 4x5 and like it. I have always used a #72 with it. I rate it at EI 200, then apply filter factor (5 stops; 32X)... and usually a reciprocity compensation (data that I generated myself. I could post it here, if you like). I mainly develop it in Pyrocat-HD, but have also used Blazinol (Rodinol wannabee). Cheers and have fun with this film!

 

[pentaxuser]

If EI 12, say, is correct such that f11 gives 1/12th of a second but the filter at 400 film speed gives a different exposure then isn't the simplest solution to then adjust the film speed dial on the camera either up or down from 400 so that the camera's meter gives 1/12th of a second?

That way you have calibrated your camera's meter to match the filter and can take pictures relying on the camera's meter.

I have used f11 for added safety at British Isles' latitudes and this time of year

pentaxuser

 

[Denverdad]

Although EI 6 or 12 is about right for this film with an R72 filter I think you will need much more compensation when using your Lee #87 filter. The problem is that the sensitivity of these modern pseudo-IR films starts dropping off earlier in the infrared spectrum than the true IR films of the past, which means that even relatively small differences in the cut-on wavelength of the filter can make a huge difference. At the point where your #87 filter starts passing light the film has lost almost all sensitivity. Not quite though, and I think Dave's suggestion to add an additional 5 or 6 more stops of exposure (beyond what you would do for the R72) should be about right. So I'm suggesting an EI of around ~0.3 for this combination.

That is a crazy low EI of course, which implies a couple complications. One is that your camera's film speed setting doesn't go anywhere near that low, so if you're using the camera meter to provide baseline exposure you will still have to do some mental manipulations to arrive at your aperture/shutter-speed settings. Personally I tend to shoot IR in mostly bright sunny conditions and have found that the good ole' sunny-16 "rule" still works pretty well for finding exposure settings. For example if we're rating the film at EI 0.3 and want to shoot at f/16 in "sunny" conditions, the exposure time would just be the reciprocal of 0.3 or ~3 seconds. Or equivalently that's 1.6 seconds at f/11, 0.8 seconds at f/8, and so forth.

That brings up the next complication, which is reciprocity failure. IR films tend to exhibit this pretty strongly, so you will have to deal with that for very long exposures. I think the datasheet for this film says exposure times up to 1/2 second require no compensation, but unfortunately don't provide any kind of chart of reciprocity corrections beyond this (or at least I haven't seen them). If you're in that long-exposure time regime you may have to estimate the reciprocity correction based on what is published for other IR films.

As for ND filters, yes you should be able to add them as you always would, applying appropriate corrections. In principle anyway - the only question would be how well your particular ND filters perform in the near-IR, given that they're normally intended for visible wavelengths only. I.e., they could potentailly transmit more or less than the rated value.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Welcome to APUG

Great choice if camera and lens.

Keep the Sun behind you and Sunlight directly on the leaves and grass. I have always used infrared film at box speed and metered through the lens with the filter mounted on the lens.

 

[DWThomas]

[ . . . ] At the point where your #87 filter starts passing light the film has lost almost all sensitivity. Not quite though, and I think Dave's suggestion to add an additional 5 or 6 more stops of exposure (beyond what you would do for the R72) should be about right. So I'm suggesting an EI of around ~0.3 for this combination. [ . . . ].

Just to note ... someone upthread suggested the 87 is a 730 cutoff; I was adding 5 or 6 stops to use a 760 filter -- I would expect 1, at most 2, stops would handle the difference between using a 720 and a 730.** Of course, if you are traveling into reciprocity failure, still more exposure will be necessary; that could be dealt with by lowering the EI for the initial reading or by a separate compensation adjustment. Best I recall, my exposures used with IR400 were in the sub-1-second range and I don't recall thinking much about reciprocity failure, although at 1 second and above some films might be getting into that problem. (Nothing anything like pinhole exposures where a cloudy day and f/275 or the like might make a compensated 30 second exposure into 3 minutes with the compensation.)

** To note, I only needed one additional stop to go from a 720 to a 760 with the late, lamented Efke IR film. The Rollei IR400 spectral response is already down at 720 and apparently drops like a rock above 720,

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

Rollei IR is supposed be sensitised up to 820, so one should be able to get good results with the 87.

 

[Patrick Robert James]

I think you will find that shooting infrared is easier if you just standardize an exposure. Back when I did it with Kodak and Konica films I used just one exposure in the sun. I remember that with Konica the exposure was f/5.6 @ 1/60 with a red filter. Shot everything that way as long as it was in the sun. If you are really interested in shooting a lot of the film, do a test by bracketing your exposures. I also found that tonality was better with a Red filter instead of an 87.

Hope that helps you. Good luck.

 

[Denverdad]

Just to note ... someone upthread suggested the 87 is a 730 cutoff; I was adding 5 or 6 stops to use a 760 filter -- I would expect 1, at most 2, stops would handle the difference between using a 720 and a 730.** Of course, if you are traveling into reciprocity failure, still more exposure will be necessary; that could be dealt with by lowering the EI for the initial reading or by a separate compensation adjustment. Best I recall, my exposures used with IR400 were in the sub-1-second range and I don't recall thinking much about reciprocity failure, although at 1 second and above some films might be getting into that problem. (Nothing anything like pinhole exposures where a cloudy day and f/275 or the like might make a compensated 30 second exposure into 3 minutes with the compensation.)

** To note, I only needed one additional stop to go from a 720 to a 760 with the late, lamented Efke IR film. The Rollei IR400 spectral response is already down at 720 and apparently drops like a rock above 720,

Dave, thanks for the additional comments. When I read your earlier post I mistakenly thought you were referring to the Lee 87 when you mentioned a 760nm filter. It doesn't matter though because it's clearly not a 730nm filter either. I am confident that it is actually the same as a Kodak Wratten 87 which has it's 50% transmission point way out at 795nm. Here for example is some measured data someone took for this filter (from this blog), which basically confirms the transmission follows that of a Wratten 87. The bottom line is that the additional exposure required may actually be worse than just 5-6 additional stops I was thinking before. To be fair, I haven't actually used the Lee 87 + Rollei film combination myself, so my estimates are just extrapolations. I did use it once or twice with Efke IR820 film though and found that combination required about 2-1/2 stops more exposure compared with a 720nm filter. One other data point I can offer is that I have had occasion to shoot Rollei 400 film through a Wratten 88A filter which has a cut-on wavelength intermediate between 720nm and 760nm filters. In that case I found that it needed about 2 to 3 stops more exposure than the 720nm filter. Since this is half-way to the 5-6 stops you suggested for a 760nm filter, it all seems to be pretty consistent to me and suggests that the Lee 87 should require even more exposure compensation.

Rollei IR is supposed be sensitised up to 820, so one should be able to get good results with the 87.

Andrew, I have seen specifications for this film claiming 820nm too, but I think that number is optimistic; something of a marketing value mostly. Unlike Efke IR820 which had a response which was basically flat all the way out to around 820nm (and then fell off sharply), the Rollei film's response peaks in the high 600nm range and then declines rapidly and steadily after that. Now the spectral plots (if you can believe them) do show some extremely small sensitivity at just over 800nm or so, but it is so low there compared to the peak that you just aren't going to see much response out there at all. So the film isn't really going to give the same response with an 87 filter at all.

 

[Helinophoto]

With the Hoya r72, I tend to shoot at EI 12 in flat'ish light and at EI 6 with 25% reduced developing-time in hard light, to save the highlights. (HC-110).

You need to experiment a little with your filter.

My notes: http://helino-photo.blogspot.com/2013/09/infrared-shooting-what-you-cant-see.html

 

[Miller]

I have tried this combination a couple of months ago, and compensated 6 to 8 stops.
There was no visible impact on the film whatsoever. Mind you, the frame numbers were there, and also exposure data from my film back.
One frame showed results of a light leak from the filter.
My conclusion was that the Lee filter is just too strong for this film.
I would be interested in your test results, of course.

 

[DWThomas]

Hmmm well if the Lee 87 is higher than 760, I'd shy away from it!

It's weird and frustrating -- the Lee website describes it as "Transmission begins above 730 nanometres" which frankly sounds a bit vague but could be said to correlate with the list below.

Other data shows Wratten numbers "block[ing] wavelengths below":
87 740nm
87A 880
87B 820
87C 790

There is a spectral sensitivity graph toward the bottom right of the IR 400 datasheet which shows it starts to drop approaching 700, declining precipitously beyond 730 or so. If perchance one tried to use a Wratten 87A they had laying around, I suspect an aluminum disk would work about as well!

Edit: A B&W Filter brochure here lists their 092 as approximately an 89B with cutoff of 695, and their 093 as approximately an 87C but shows the cutoff as 830. "Others available on special order."

YMMV, etc!

 

[Denverdad]

I just rediscovered (there was a url link here which no longer exists) from two years ago where we had a similar discussion. If you go about 2/3 down the page you can see where I posted spectral transmission plots that I made for various IR filters, and a sensitivity plot for a couple IR films, all based on manufacturer's data. The light red curve for the Wratten 87/Lee 87 filter in the first plot shows it starting to transmit right at about 740nm (hence the number the Wikipedia page is giving), and that it's transmission rises to half of it's maximum value by about 795nm.

You might also find the "foliage" curve in that plot of interest ; it is a sort of average reflectivity response for leaves that I put together based on several scientific papers (mostly involving deciduous trees as I recall). This curve can be helpful in visualizing where you need infrared sensitivity, and what cut-on filter wavelength you need in order to achieve a good Wood effect.

It certainly can be confusing and frustrating trying to work through all these numbers, especially given some of confusing and erroneous data which is out there. In the earlier thread I pointed out a couple of discrepancies to watch out for.

 

[Ester Caty Young]

Thanks a million everyone, for all the input, info and advice. I really appreciate this such a great support.

 

[DWThomas]

(After reviewing the thread from DenverDad and some of my own work) Lighting is important. Looking at some of mine, when shooting away from the sun with color on a really clear day I have seen skies look so dark blue one might think I used a polarizer; such a sky will easily approach black with IR filtration. The OP in that thread linked to some shots where the sky appeared to have mostly layered cloud cover. That will not do much under IR. Occasional light streaky (cirrus?) clouds or small puffy white clouds where there is a lot of clear blue sky as background will produce dramatic results, hazy sun or relatively dull days, nowhere near as good. My experience has also been that deciduous foliage shows much more Wood effect than conifers.

 

[silveror0]

I've never attempted IR photography, but I've always wondered about one factor in particular: focusing, especially at close distances. It's well known that different colors of the visible spectrum will focus at different distances from the lens (not all at the film plane). Modern lens are corrected to bring all colors of the visible spectrum to a sharp focus at the same plane. Then there's IR, beyond the visible, that if not corrected, should focus some distance behind the film plane and thus be out-of-focus at the film plane, while the visible light in the image would be in focus. Many 35mm lenses I've seen have a "little red R" next to the infinity mark on their focus scales to allow for a correction. That correction, I'm guessing, is valid only for infinity focusing... so what does one do in a close-up situation (where relying on depth of field may be insufficient)? I no longer use 35mm or MF, only large format view cameras. Can someone explain how to use IR film with a view camera? Also, how does IR film differ from non-IR films; does it solve any of these concerns? Is my thinking just nonsense?

 

[DWThomas]

The current "IR" films barely record outside the visible range, so my sense is a focus adjustment is unnecessary. It could be worth a test, as it might vary with some lenses. IIRC the old Kodak material went out toward 1000nm and most of today's stuff is plummeting downward at about 750 or so.

 

[LAG]

... lenses I've seen have a "little red R" next to the infinity mark on their focus scales to allow for a correction. That correction, I'm guessing, is valid only for infinity focusing...

No, is valid for any distance (by the way, some lenses use a little red R, but others a red spot, and others a red line ...)

... so what does one do in a close-up situation (where relying on depth of field may be insufficient)? ... Can someone explain how to use IR film with a view camera?

In those situations one way to "draw near" (in focus) is, once you have your subject focused, turning/shifting the focusing ring (...) +10% to 20% - that % it will depend on the plane/subject final distance - (If you pay attention to that mentioned Red mark, you'll find out that it has a "fixed" (%) distance in that DoF reference ring, but bear in mind that those marks are valid for those lenses). You can also move your box that % distance without moving the focus ring.

Another way is using the Hyperfocal distance (taking into acount that mentioned +% and also taking specially care with the shortest back focus on the foreground). Of course you can mix both of them, and when possible (and with the resultant expense of film) try/error to calibrate using a focus-bracketing with Small apertures, until you reach/learn "your personal/film comfort point".

Keep in mind:

a) there is always field-room for error
b) not all the IR films have the same focusing position/distance
c) final-focusing should be always done with filter/s on

...Also, how does IR film differ from non-IR films; does it solve any of these concerns? Is my thinking just nonsense?

Films differ in spectral sensivity, but also filters transmitance is important.