See the world through invisible light withInfrared Photography

Infrared photography lets you see the world through invisible light — it records wavelengths your eyes will never detect on their own. Every digital camera sensor is naturally sensitive to near-infrared light, roughly 700 to 1000 nanometers, but manufacturers glue a hot mirror over the sensor to block it so ordinary daylight photos look normal. Remove or replace that filter and the same camera starts seeing the world through invisible light: chlorophyll in leaves reflects infrared brilliantly, so trees and grass glow white or pink, while blue sky and clear water absorb it and drop to deep, dramatic near-black.

There are two ways in. The first is a converted camera — a permanent infrared conversion where a technician swaps the internal hot mirror for an infrared filter cut at a chosen wavelength. A 590nm conversion gives warm, candy-colored false color. 665nm is the balanced middle ground most of the images on this site were shot with. 720nm is the classic infrared look that channel-swaps into rich color or converts beautifully to black and white. 850nm skips color entirely and delivers pure monochrome. Converted cameras autofocus normally, meter normally, and shoot handheld at everyday shutter speeds, which is why converting an older body you already own is the cheapest serious way to start.

The second route is full spectrum. Here the hot mirror comes out and nothing wavelength-specific replaces it, so the camera sees ultraviolet, visible, and infrared light all at once. You then choose the look in the field with screw-on lens filters or clip-in filters that sit in front of the sensor. One full spectrum body plus a small set of filters covers every wavelength, including the Aerochrome-style red-foliage results people fall in love with. The tradeoff is that you carry and change filters instead of just lifting the camera to your eye.

Lenses matter more in infrared than they do in visible light. Some designs produce a bright central hot spot at smaller apertures because their internal coatings were never engineered for infrared wavelengths. Older, simpler kit lenses are frequently the best performers. That is why this site hosts a searchable lens database organized by camera mount, so you can check a lens before you buy it rather than after.

Everything here is written by a working photographer who has converted, bought, sold, and shot a decade of infrared bodies — Nikon D70, D40X, D60, D200, D300, D750, Z7II, and a full-spectrum Canon 40D among them. The guides explain conversions, filters, wavelengths, lens hot spots, and post-processing in plain English, the gallery shows what each wavelength actually looks like, and the free guide below walks you from curiosity to your first infrared frame.