Urban Night shots with HIE

I hav purchased Tim Rudmans "The Photographer's Master Printing Course"
on one of the first pages there is a picture shot at night using infrared film.
The subject is lit by a street lamp. I'm thrilled and inspired by that picture but infrared at night ?
Is it really possible ?
How much IR comes from street lamps ?
approx what EI to use with HIE ?
What filter, If any ?
I have a 664nm ? filter or something like that.
Greetings Søren

Hmmm... that's quite an idea - IR at night. It's probably possible, as you can do IR portrait stuff with high - level tungsten light and a deep red filter.

As to how much IR comes from street lights, it depends on what kind of a light it is... I'll get back specifically the info for different types shortly...

And for the speed, it's hard to tell: under tungsten light, without a filter, I'd rate HIE at about ISO 80 - 100. Under daylight, it's a little under ISO 200. Using a filter, though, the speed changes quite a bit.

At night, though, with an infrared (RM72, wratten 88), the speed will proably be in the single or low double digits. Your exposure meter will also probably not give you any good information, due to poor IR sensitivity, so you'll have to guess and bracket a lot...

Try it though, this could be really neat...

With Kodak HIE, a red 25 filter is usually enough to give the IR effect during the daylight. At night, you may want to try using it without a filter and with the red 25 filter. Any other filter, and you will be standing there for quite a while.

I do agree: a red 25 filter or no filter will probably work best.


I checked up on the emission spectra of street lights, and it confirms this...

Some street lights are xeon (the blue ones), and have a lot of UV, but a decent amount of IR. Tungsten lights (standard bulbs), which are unlikely to be street lights, put out a lot of ir (as much or more than they do visible light).

Sodium, hydrogen, or mercury lamps (most common here in the US), have a lot of UV and visible light, but IR is quite low...

I'll try this as well, as i have a few filters hanging around and a roll of HIE in the fridge that I need to use...

colrehogan said:

.... and you will be standing there for quite a while.

Click to expand...

Yes, you could! but that could be half the fun. We've all seen those photos taken at night with the tail/headlights of cars showing up as long blurs (phaser fire!). Well, standing there with the camera set on "B" for several seconds/minutes will do this for you. I highly recommend an all-manual camera; setting it on "B" won't drain the battery required to operate the shutter on many models and many newer cameras use an infrared exposure counter that might fog HIE.

You may have to experiment a bit with these night shots, but isn't that the fun?

Thanks all. Eh, rating the film using the TTL (F90X) or ATL (QL17 GIII) meters.
Can set it at 400 or much lower for a start. I recall reading something about the 400 ISO somwhere, Black & White photography perhaps. Ill look it up. The red 25 filter does that equal Nikon 060 and B&W 090 ? somewhat light red ?
Greetings Søren

I'm pretty sure that the 090 is similar, if not the same as the #25. I do not know about the nikon filter though...

Soeren said:

I hav purchased Tim Rudmans "The Photographer's Master Printing Course"
on one of the first pages there is a picture shot at night using infrared film.
The subject is lit by a street lamp. I'm thrilled and inspired by that picture but infrared at night ?
Is it really possible ?
How much IR comes from street lamps ?
approx what EI to use with HIE ?
What filter, If any ?
I have a 664nm ? filter or something like that.
Greetings Søren

Click to expand...

I have this book and have just looked at it again. He uses the word "red filter" which suggests a wratten 25 or at most 29. I suspect it may have been an ordinary red filter used in normal B&W. He also says a slow shutter speed to blur the movement of the children. So without the need to create blur in their movement then a faster speed would presumably have been possible and still achieved the shot. So hanging around for several minutes or even seconds would seem to be unnecessary. Kodak HIE is very fast compared to Konica or Ilford or Maco. He doesn't say that it was Kodak HIE but it looks to be from the halation.

A good book on infra red is "Infra Red Photography" by Hugh Milsom ISBN 0 86343 373 1, Interestingly none of Hugh Milsom's photos or those of his guest photographers were taken at night and he makes no mention of night photography with infrared but this is probably because it is usually associated with bright daylight shots for its best effect.

I understand that Weegee in the U.S. in the 1940's, I think, took night shots using infrared film and an infrared filter over a flash using a Speed Graphic. The opaque filter cut out all visible light from the flash so people were unaware of his taking it but the scene registered on the film.

Pentaxuser

In fact, Weegee (and many other photographers, seemingly) used special infrared bulbs, the bulb itself coated with the visible-opaque IR filter in lacquer form. Weegee referred to this as his "invisible light" and claimed to use it, on occasion, to avoid disturbing his subjects (though how they could fail to hear a Speed Graphic going off, with the pop of the bulb and clack of the solenoid shutter, is beyond me).

Interesting. So is there a website displaying Weegees pics ?
The two filters I mentioned in my earlier post look the same to me so now it's just loading some HIE and find some night subjects. Darned, wish I was in Århus to the "Århus festuge"
søren