Infra Red
 

Hi all - purchased an XM2 (GL2) and am very pleased (apart from Canon having to sort out the infernal 'bleeding red' problem).

I want to try some shooting in the dark, and would like to emulate the 'night shot' facility as on the Sonys ... is this possible? Is it a question of just buying a filter and an IR illuminator? Any good suppliers?

Thanks!

Do you want to really shoot in the dark or just emulate the look?
There are lots of post process plugins that do the latter.

I'm not sure the first is possible since the camera's have IR-cut
filters and I'm not sure a seperate IR filter will somehow help with
this. Can it shift the IR range to normal light or something (don't
think this is possible?)?

I have seen special IR "lenses" or attachments that you attach
to a camera and require power (to convert the signal) and these
where very expensive.

By the way, I'm pretty sure the bleeding red problem is not due
to Canon but the way DV encoding works.

Thanks for the reply - I'd be shooting in darkness (ghost hunting, no less). May be chaeaper perhaps to buy a cheap secondhand Sony!

Interesting comment about the red issue - I was on a film course and compared the XM2 to a Sony VX1000; the latter did seem more able to cope with reds.

Paul.

Keep in mind that the Canon's are balanced (out of the box) more
towards red than the Sony's (more towards blue). This is a known
fact. So you should see this problem more easy on a Canon than
on a Sony since it displays reds earlier. If you want to really
compare shoot something that is really read on both camera's.

Ofcourse I might be wrong, but I think I also saw this happen
when I converted a still photo (I took with a digital 2mp still
camera) to DV on my computer and a red spot had that artifact
which it didn't before when it was still a JPEG.

I'd say get a cheaper Sony might be a better way indeed. Then
again there might be something cheap on the market (although
I doubt it).

Some cams have a "nightshot"position. This physically removes the IR cut filter. If you want to avoid the visble spectrum too (if it's not perfectly dark) then you could add a IR pass filter and /or add extra IR lighting.