List of Infrared (NIR) films

[MCB18]

Non will ever equal or exceed the performance of the Kodak HIE Infra Red. Tricky to use, but get a good shot you will have an outstanding winner. With no antihalation layer the ghostly edges of a subject in the frame will never be equaled,

Thanks for reminding me, I need to wash the antihal off some Aviphot and shoot IR. That would be really neat.

 

[Ivo Stunga]

It is really neat. I wash it so: load fresh film in tank in darkness, then some baths with constant agitation:
- 10s in regular water;
- 10s in distilled water, discard;
- 10s in distilled water, keep for up to 10 films;
- finishing 30s in pure Isopropyl alcohol, stopping the Antihalation layer removal at the black layer, just before the blue starts washing off. 500ml IPA can handle 10 films easily;
- IPA treated film dries in minutes, respool.

Shoot ASAP to avoid fogging of prewashed film in storage.
You might find that the "sensitivity improved" a stop or so, because of the additional exposure from halation. Sharpness will be less too, but that isn't too important for the traditional "IR look".

 

[MattKing]

I know Aviphot has already been mentioned, but I will say, it is EXTREMELY responsive. Even with the cheapest IR filter I could get for my RB67, it has an extremely obvious wood effect,

Pedantry alert:
It is "Wood" effect, not "wood" effect, named after Robert W. Wood, who studied it extensively.
It has nothing to do with the material that the trunks of trees are made of.
My apologies - the pedantry is over

 

[lamerko]

Shoot ASAP to avoid fogging of prewashed film in storage.

I paid attention to him now. What's the drama with this pre-wash, since there is no interference from light and chemicals?

 

[Ivo Stunga]

I'm no chemist, but month in shelf created a noticeable fogging. Kept 2 rolls for longer to test this out when spring comes. You are interfering in chemical balance before exposure has been taken, after all.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Shoot ASAP to avoid fogging of prewashed film in storage.

I never prewash the film while it is in storage. I do prewash most films when developing because I have found, following others' advice, that prewashing improves the development consistency and has never, for me, increased fog.

 

[Ivo Stunga]

This is different - it's "prewashed" as in that the Antihalation layer has been washed away - might be unwise to leave such roll in storage and expect nothing to change. So people say, so I've seen happening to my Superpan 200. Therefore I left the other test rolls to lay about for longer, for more definite answer/insight.

Prewash before development is an entirely different matter altogether. I use it before reversing PET films

 

[Sirius Glass]

This is different - it's "prewashed" as in that the Anthlihalation layer has been washed away - might be unwise to leave such roll in storage and expect nothing to change. So people say, so I've seen happening to my Superpan 200. Therefore I left the other test rolls to lay about for longer, for more definite answer/insight.

Prewash before development is an entirely different matter altogether. I use it before reversing PET films

I for one would not want the Antihalation layer removed either. We violently agree.

 

[Ivo Stunga]

But I do want it removed if I want to emulate Kodak HIE look. So I sometimes wash my AH layer away the day before, take my IR filter and go for a forest walk.
Nice aesthetic, hard to be disappointed with it. But it's not for everyday use for sure, plenty of downsides.

I'd buy some Aviphot with no AH layers for this reason alone...

 

[Sirius Glass]

But I do want it removed if I want to emulate Kodak HIE look. So I sometimes wash my AH layer away the day before, take my IR filter and go for a forest walk.
Nice aesthetic, hard to be disappointed with it. But it's not for everyday use for sure, plenty of downsides.

I'd buy some Aviphot with no AH layers for this reason alone...

I have at least two rolls of HIE in my freezer.

 

[Ivo Stunga]

Nice - I've seen only pictures of it (and other IR emulsions of yesteryear), mystical unicorn to me. I'm glad Aviphot exists and is available in 135 - the bloom effect from lacking antihalation layer can be replicated very closely.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

What filter do you all recommend for Ilford SFX? Red 25, Red 29? Looking at the sensitivity curve, going with a full R72 would give you very little room to work with, and extremely long compensation times.

 

[DWThomas]

I've not done anything extensive test-wise, but tried an 89B (which has been laying around here since the 1960s) and got some fairly decent Wood effect. Exact specs were a bit elusive, but I was led to believe the 89B is about a 695 cutoff. I liked what I got exposing at EI 6 out of what I tried. Don't own a Red 29 and haven't bothered to acquire one. I do have 720 and 760, but didn't try them with SFX, partly because I only had the adapter to fit the 89B on the camera of choice. (And I know the 760 would be silly -- even on the Rollei IR 400 it needed about 6 stops more than the 720 -- it was cool on the old Efke 820 stuff though!)

Edit: Link to SFX try

 

[pbromaghin]

What filter do you all recommend for Ilford SFX? Red 25, Red 29? Looking at the sensitivity curve, going with a full R72 would give you very little room to work with, and extremely long compensation times.

I feel VERY uncomfortable giving a photographer like you advice, but I don't see much reason to shoot it with anything but R72. There are plenty of great films that cost less and don't have the obtrusive grain. I haven't shot it a lot but plan to do more and that will probably stick with 6x9. Since it's nearly impossible to truly meter IR, I generally just use an incident meter and add 5 stops - say, f1/8 at 1/25 on a sunny day - or maybe 6.

These were done with a pre-war 645 Zeiss Super Ikonta, in D76 1+1. Negative scans with all the automatic stuff shut off and no PS besides saving for web size file. Looking forward to printing from this roll in the new darkroom.

As far as shutter speed goes, Gramma Mary doesn't sit still for long:

 

[Sirius Glass]

What filter do you all recommend for Ilford SFX? Red 25, Red 29? Looking at the sensitivity curve, going with a full R72 would give you very little room to work with, and extremely long compensation times.

I suggest you look at the websites with articles about each film, R23, R25, R29 and 720 taken of one scene and then the series with other scenes. I use each of the filters, usually only on for each composition based on my accumulated experience with the film I am using. Each scene has is own lighting and depending on what the photographer wants and how strong the Wood Effect is desired. There is no "one size fits all" answer.

 

[pbromaghin]

I suggest you look at the websites with articles about each film, R23, R25, R29 and 720 taken of one scene and then the series with other scenes. I use each of the filters, usually only on for each composition based on my accumulated experience with the film I am using. Each scene has is own lighting and depending on what the photographer wants and how strong the Wood Effect is desired. There is no "one size fits all" answer.

I am really torn about how to process this film. I plan to do some major shooting later this spring and SFX will hopefully figure into it.

All my SFX processing so far has been with D76 1+1 and it has been alright. However, I have experimented with homebrewed D23 on other films and I wonder if the suppression of burnt out highlights would be good. Or, the currently revived thread on D96 is making me wonder if it would be useful to tame the contrast. But then I have been gifted a lot of diafine working solution and a couple of unopened powder kits. Looking around tells me that might be right for mushing the grain and bringing up the shadows.

Decisions, decisions.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I am really torn about how to process this film. I plan to do some major shooting later this spring and SFX will hopefully figure into it.

All my SFX processing so far has been with D76 1+1 and it has been alright. However, I have experimented with homebrewed D23 on other films and I wonder if the suppression of burnt out highlights would be good. Or, the currently revived thread on D96 is making me wonder if it would be useful to tame the contrast. But then I have been gifted a lot of diafine working solution and a couple of unopened powder kits. Looking around tells me that might be right for mushing the grain and bringing up the shadows.

Decisions, decisions.

I use XTOL and replenished XTOL for Kodak HIE and Rollei IR 400 resulting in fine grain and great tonality.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

About a year ago, I played around with some Delta 400 with a 720 filter. Got decent Wood Effect. The downside was that the exposures were quite long.
I just got my hands on 50 sheets of 8x10 Aviphot 200 from Photrio member, MCB18. Cannot wait to take some out, but that will have to wait until we get decent weather. Anyhoo, here is a link to that D400+720IR filter video, if anyone is interested...

https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/delta-400-720-filter.194387/#post-2592732

 

[Ivo Stunga]

Such a long exposures under bright sun doesn't make this practical, but nice experiment - I'm all for those.

 

[Yosua]

Surprisingly Ilford Delta 3200 also shows a trace of infrared sensitivity:

Hacienda #13 22.R.R.
Gelatin-silver photograph on Ilford Classic VC FB photographic paper, image size 21.5cm X 16.3cm, from a Ilford Delta 3200 negative
exposed in a Fiji GSW680 camera fitted with a IR720 filter.
Exposure was 8 minutes at f8 to show a trace of Wood effect.

Well, exposing a 3200 ISO film for 8 minutes in broad daylight, through a IR 720 filter, sure, there is a trace of wood effect. With a so long exposure time this may work with any kind of film. I remember trying to expose one frame of a 16mm movie camera set to frame by frame, exposing for 2 seconds through an IR Wratten filter (I forgot which one) and I got an all red image on Kodachrome 25. But you can even get a14,000 nanometers thermography of the sun with a regular piece of paper: hold the lens as with a magnifying glass until the paper just begins to burn. In this way, it once happened that I once took an old piece of photographic paper to observe its surface pattern, near a lamp, and noticed that the heat from the lamp caused the paper to darken. I then tried to take a piece of negative film and hold it against the paper like for a contact print and hold all of it near the lamp for 30 seconds, and I got a very clear positive image on the paper, without darkroom and without chemicals. So It's possible to get a thermography of very hot objects very simply.

 

[Paul Manuell]

What filter do you all recommend for Ilford SFX? Red 25, Red 29? Looking at the sensitivity curve, going with a full R72 would give you very little room to work with, and extremely long compensation times.

This was SFX200 in my Pentax 645NII. I used a full R72 SRB Photographic filter, which was MUCH cheaper than Hoya and other big brand names.

And ref. compensation times: I was using 4 stops over the non filtered readings with this film/filter combo, though sometimes I bracketed 4 stops and 5 stops just to make sure. So for instance, at my chosen f stop (f11) I was getting 1/250th without the filter attached, so manually set 4 stops slower at 1/15th once the filter was attached. Hope this helps

 

[John Wiegerink]

View attachment 369277 This was SFX200 in my Pentax 645NII. I used a full R72 SRB Photographic filter, which was MUCH cheaper than Hoya and other big brand names.

And ref. compensation times: I was using 4 stops over the non filtered readings with this film/filter combo, though sometimes I bracketed 4 stops and 5 stops just to make sure. So for instance, at my chosen f stop (f11) I was getting 1/250th without the filter attached, so manually set 4 stops slower at 1/15th once the filter was attached. Hope this helps

Your image is really stunning for SFX200. Ilford doesn't list a R72 filter in their tech sheet on SFX200, but your image speaks for itself. I wonder what a deep red filter would look like compared to your R72 shot.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

I use a cheap Zomei (or at times the more expensive Urth) 720 filter, and apply a factor of 32x (+5 stops) EI 200 (that's the EI I use with no filter). So, that's EI 6.

 

[Paul Manuell]

Your image is really stunning for SFX200. Ilford doesn't list a R72 filter in their tech sheet on SFX200, but your image speaks for itself. I wonder what a deep red filter would look like compared to your R72 shot.

I imagine with just a deep red filter instead of an R72 it would simply lighten the foliage but not turn it white like an R72 does

 

[Yosua]

Rera Pan 100s (Silberra Pan 100 cut into 127 roll film) with Hoya R72 IR filter ISO 12