I’ve been doing some research over the last few days about getting a new digital camera. I’m more than happy with doing most of my photography on a film camera, like my Nikon F100 or Hasselblad 500c/m, depending on what I want to shoot, but my Nikon D50 is starting to show its age.

That’s not to say that it sucks, because it doesn’t. But at the moment, I’m looking for a camera that can do interesting things that I can’t do as easily with film.

This is where infrared photography comes in. I shot a roll of the now discontinued Kodak HIE a few years ago, and while it was a major pain in the arse, it was also a great learning experience, as I had to load the film in complete darkness, shoot with a dark red filter on the lens, and focus to a wavelength I couldn’t actually see. I’d get some more HIE if I could, but being discontinued, people are selling expired rolls of 36 exposure 135 film for over 20 quid, which, frankly is a piss take.

Below are a few images from that roll of film. They’re not particularly well exposed, but the results are, I think, interesting.

I read about converting existing digital cameras to only shoot in IR a few years after shooting that first and only roll of HIE, where the filter in front of the camera’s sensor is replaced from an infrared blocking filter to one that blocks visible light wavelengths, which looks like a great option, but it has associated problems, the main one being needing to buy a new (or secondhand) camera and playing around with it’s insides, voiding the warranty at the same time…

At the same time, I was just browsing other DSLR cameras and remembered that Fuji offered a range of cameras that used Nikon’s F Mount, so while looking at those, I came across the Fuji IS Pro, which is aimed at forensics, law enforcement and astronomy use, with its ability to see in the IR and UV parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Here’s what Fuji have to say about it:

The IS Pro, utilises Fujifilm’s Super CCD Pro and Real Photo Processor Pro technology to see light from the ultraviolet (UV), visible and near infrared (IR) portion of the spectrum (approx. 380nm – 1000nm)

The ultimate goal in development of Fujifilm’s D-SLR cameras has been to maximise image quality through constant R & D into the Company’s proprietary sensors. With the introduction six years ago of the acclaimed Super CCD, Fujifilm has moved away from increasing the pixel density in favour of image quality developments that increase the overall performance of the sensor.

The FinePix IS Pro will see the refinement of a winning formula — Fujifilm’s Super CCD SR II will be updated to the new Super CCD SR Pro. Using a unique layout of twelve million paired photodiodes (6.17 million larger ‘S’ photodiodes for main image information, combined with 6.17 million smaller ‘R’ photodiodes for bright area information), the IS Pro will deliver improvements in noise, dynamic range, colour and tonality. Further improving the capability of the sensor, a new, improved low-pass filter will ensure that moiré and noise are kept to an absolute minimum.

Fuji technicians believe improvements in these key areas will be of more true value to professional photographers — the challenge is quality of information, not quantity of information.

The clincher here is that it’s dirt cheap for such an interesting camera, with one showing up on Google for under £400. It’s definitely a purchase I’m going to consider quite seriously as IR photography has interested me for a long time.

Where does this tie into my Design for Simulation project? Well, it was thinking about the IR in the project that got me thinking back about the photographs I’d taken, and how interesting it was to see the world in a different way.