Black and White Photography Blog, Vol. I

If you do have an interest in infrared flash - my flash was modified by Shane at www.BeyondVisible.com

How it worked for me - though he has various options - is that I bought a Vivitar 285HV flash ($89 from B & H Photo). I told Shane at BeyondVisible that I was using Kodak HIE film and that I wanted to filter the flash so it’d emit light that matched (more or less) the sensitivity of this film.

He did a great job.

The ASA with the modified flash, 35mm lens, and HIE film developed in Ilford DD-X is about 160 - 200 ASA. No filter over the lens.

I’ve been using it with my Hexar Classic which has a nice sync speed of 1/250th of a second.

If you look directly at the flash while it fires you will see a dull red pop, almost like an IR focus mechanism that some cameras use. If you are looking at the scene being photographed, you will not see the IR illumination at all. (That’s disconcerting sometimes as I need to look quickly at the back of the flash to see that it went off, i.e. it’s recycling).

What I didn’t know, until last night, was that the photocell works fine with the flash. In other words, you can work in the flash’s auto-mode. So, for example, if you set the flash to “red” (there are four auto settings), then at f5.6 with a 35mm lens, you can shoot from 5 - 25 feet and the flash will read the reflected light and make adjustments.

The flash also has manual mode, so most of the time if I’m using manual I shoot at 1/2 power, which gives a pretty quick recycle time with Nicads.

I have no idea how this will work with modified digital cameras (i.e. that are sensitive to IR light). I do know that the 285 was changed at some point so that it wouldn’t burn out the circuits of digital cameras.

BeyondVisible also offers flashes that have been modified to emit UV light. And frankly - thank you Shane. He helped open up a new world for me.

And it’s not all about shooting in the dark. More and more places don’t allow flash. But here I am at the Metropolitan Museum shooting flash with guards all over the place telling tourists - no flash! No flash! And not noticing me at all.

And there is another avenue that interests me - sticking a filter on the camera and using the flash as IR fill flash.

If you do go down this road - unless you want very ghoulish eyes - worse than red-eye - you’ll need to move the IR flash off camera. In my case just a simple bracket for the flash does the trick. And you’ll also need to deal with the normal variance of IR film; certain colors will want to blow out. Some colors will vanish.

For me - this is still some uncharted water I’m headed into.

P.S. there have been production IR flashes in the past; and maybe you can find one; but I couldn’t. Also it is still possible to buy IR flash bulbs - but it is pretty expensive.

[Editors note: We asked Mr. Beckerman for a “straight” shot showing the rig, but instead he gave us this. Mr. Beckerman had better get his mind right or we’ll be releasing him from our employment. ]