Developed Efke IR820 Aura -- Looks Like Normal B&W -- What Did I Do Wrong?

[Brian Puccio]

I purchased Efke IR820 Aura from B&H. It arrived in a day since I live in NY. It went straight to my freezer, where it stayed overnight. Saturday, I took it out and took the train into the city. I left the roll in the plastic container and put it and my M6 into a changing bag, where I loaded the film, as per the instructions. I had a 28mm lens with a B+W 46 mm 091 Dark Red (029) Glass Filter on it, since the instructions indicate that the strongest filters aren't suitable for this film. My incident meter said that this filter resulted in a loss of two stops of light, so I set it to ISO 25 as opposed to ISO 100 that the box says it is rated for. I bracketed my shots -2,0,+2. The film was in my camera for about 6 hours, most of that time in my bag. After shooting the film, I put my camera and my tank into the changing bag and transferred the film. I developed it for 7 minutes in Ilford ID-11 "Stock" (Ilford Info). I followed up with EcoPro Stop, EcoPro Fixer and then rinsed it with some Photo-Flo, all according to their instructions (all of which have been proven to work with Adox CMS 20 and HP5, so I know the batches of chemicals I got are good).

My images look like normal B&W images, no IR effect.

What did I do wrong?

Here's a few images to give you an idea what they all look like.

 

[charjohncarter]

That is the way efke IR820 comes out when you use red filter. Ever once in a while I use my red filter at 25 and it looks like TriX with a red filter

 

[Brian Puccio]

Hmmm, OK, I'll give it a try with one of the filters the instructions caution you away from then, thanks.

 

[karlori]

Hmmm, OK, I'll give it a try with one of the filters the instructions caution you away from then, thanks.

I used the cokin 89B filter with my rolls as with no filter the Efke came out as a normal BW film. I focused and set the aperture then put the filter on metered TTL and took the shot.
One more thing from my experience and from articles i have read online there is a focus shift depending on the lens and the film used as the IR does not pass the same way as visible light so i avoided any close compositions... The ISO 25 is the same i got from my incident meter (when shooting with a meterless rf ) and is correct although really its not the visible light we should be metering but the IR - but that is something we just can't do. The thing with IR photography is that we are not really photographing the light but its reflection from objects and depending on their surface the light differs. Plans, people, clouds and old building facades seem to be good reflection sources, if you shoot under the tree shade you won't get the IR effect as you are not getting any reflected IR light to bounce of the leafs as you are underneath them - took me a few rolls to figure that out.)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shadowgrapher/sets/72157626883314819/

This is how i fared...

 

[Brian Puccio]

Good advice, thank you!

 

[shadowfox]

Er... Brian, you need to use an IR filter, search online for Hoya R72 or similar filters from different manufacturers.

The filter itself looks opaque unless you're looking at a *very bright* scenes. You won't mistake it with red filters, even dark red ones.

 

[rogerzilla]

Try the R72 filter. You may be able to preview the scene by looking through the filter - many people have extended (although very attenuated) IR sensitivity down to 1050 nm - but you'll need to exclude all stray light and let your eye adjust. DO NOT look at the sun through the filter! I get a very pronounced Wood effect with black skies and glowing foliage, basically what comes out on IR film, except of course it's red because my red cones are doing the seeing.

 

[kossi008]

If you stick with B+W, you'll have to step it up to the 092 filter, almost opaque to the eye. It really is Schott RG 695, meaning a long-pass with the edge at 695 nm.

Heliopan offers the RG 715 to take it a little further, but then I'm down to Iso 1.5 on my hand-held meter (without filter) with the Efke.

I would personally stay away from B+W 093, as that's already RG 830. I have no clue where the Hoya 72 comes in, but I'm guessing 720 nm...

There's no big science here, really, just do an exposure series with a wide latitude and biased towards overexposure to calibrate for your film, filter, and light-meter combo...

 

[Chris101]

Efke is sensitive to IR up to 820 nm (thus the name.) So any filter with a cutoff above 820 simply will not work. Filters that will work to give the IR effect with Efke film are the 89B (over-expose for effect), the 87, and the 87C. You might get some effect with the 70 and a much lesser amount with the 29, but you will need to overexpose, meaning that the grass will be white, but the sky won't be black. 87A and 87B will pass nothing that will expose the film, so it will be unexposed, and those are the ones the instructions warn you against.

Here is a cheat sheet with the cutoff values for various filters.