Many of us have been at this digital photography thing for some time now and may have gone through a camera upgrade or two. The reality is when you go to purchase a new camera your old camera really hasn't held its value and isn't worth a trade-in.
Most of us will opt to just keep the camera as a possible gift to a young budding photographer or as a 'backup'. However, it generally just sits in the closet and is destined to never see the light of day again. Surely there must be a better alternative rather than sending them to the big camera bag in the sky...there is...convert it to an infrared camera. I did and I am thrilled to have put my trusty old Nikon D2X back into service.
You can have your old DSLR converted to an Infrared camera, depending on what camera you have will cost you anywhere from 150.00-350.00. There are many choices when having the camera converted and depending on the look you are going for you would choose the filter accordingly.
Once the camera is converted you would expose like you normally would expose. However, it is recommended to create a custom white balance using something like green grass. Most of the Infrared effect is going to take place ‘post-processing’.
Although Lightroom can process the images I like working in Photoshop CS6 to do channel swapping and curves adjustments to get the desired effect.
The results that you get from the Infrared camera are unlike anything that you would get from a filter program. Its a fun type of photography that yields very dramatic results that are very eye-catching.
Besides I love my D2X and I am so happy to be using it again!