Canon A510 IR-Sensitivity

The A510 needs a tripod, you can't take pictures out of hand, at least in middle Europe. 

 Colours:

without filter:

with RG715 (WB, Auto):

with RG715 (WB manual):

 comment: The infrared pictures are a bit to dark. The wood effect compared to the red is not very strong. I guess a stronger IR-Filter (720~730 nm) would be nice. It will become less sensitive, but the IR-Effect should be stronger compared to the red. You have always to take a tripod with you, 0.5 sec more exposure time will not matter.

 Sharpness:
The following pictures are 1:1 crops of the original images. Saved in Photoshop with quality level '7'.
without IR-Filter:

with Heliopan RG715:

As you see, the IR images are not as sharp as the pictures taken in visible light. Especially the grass contains nearly no detail, and there wasn't much wind. You see this also in the file size ( 1.8 MB vs. 1.1 MB). But I think, the pictures contain enough detail for good use, perhaps not enough for big print sizes. 
If you close the aperture, it doesn't get better.

 Soft Blue Channel Problem
The A510 has a problem with an extreme soft blue channel.  I don't know why, but this problem is obvious in any IR-pictures taken with the RG715. You have this problem also in pictures taken with the automatic white balance. The following pictures are 1:1 crops from another picture I have taken with the A510 in the evening (19 o'clock MET, much wind).

red channel:

green channel:

blue channel:

At some pictures you have also a haze around bright objects, you can compare this in a way with the gaussian blur in Photoshop.

Use the green channel also as blue channel, shift then the new blue and the red-channel and you get good quality color IR-pictures.

[go back to sensitivity list]                    Foveon