lens hot spot

Infrared lens hotspot.

Good morning. 

If you have purchased the infrared filter as i previously mentioned in a blog post couple of weeks ago, and have been shooting with it, you will have noticed the strange colouring that you have received. 

The bright red file is normal, Prior to shooting setting a custom white balance is recommended. A lot of advice i have read is setting it again green grass or foliage. For the below image being a city scape there wasn't much grass around, so i chose to shoot in RAW and play with the white balance later in post. 

One thing i have learn is the visible hot spot in the centre of the image. I shot this using Nikons 24-70mm f2.8 and lens hot spots are a most common problem encountered when shooting infrared light. They usually manifest in the form of a bright circle, sometimes in the shape of aperture leaves directly in the center of the image. The problem is exaggerated as you stop down (increase f stop number), with the spot becoming more prominent and defined. 

Hot spots can be caused for a variety of reasons, the most common of which is the coating on the inside of the lens barrel being reflective in IR light. Another frequent reason is light interaction between the coatings of the lens elements. A less common reason is light interaction between the lens elements and the imaging sensor(usually the micro-lenses) in the camera. In this case using the lens on one camera model may have no hot spot issues and on another model there could be prominent hot spots.

Unfortunately, if your lens has this issue the only solution is to simply use a different lens altogether. Fortunately the majority of lenses don’t have this problem or the problem is very minor and normally not visible in images.

Once i find a suitable lens and am happy with the results ill report back. 

If you have any suggestions to use on a Nikon body id like to hear your views. Feel free to use the contact page.

I hope that you enjoy these images. This is a new technique and something i am enjoying playing with. 

 

Please feel free to share this post on your social media, giving credit to the photographer Lee Ramsden www.leeramsden.com

 

Thanks