How to Make an Infrared Camera

Taking infrared photographs will send your artistic picture taking to the next level. Infrared photography produces images with a dreamy, almost fantasy type of feel. Enabling your digital camera to take these photographs is easy and will cost you next to nothing. The entire process should take less than an hour, but your newly crafted filter lens will give you years of enjoyment.

Things You'll Need

• Scissors
• Super glue
• Black marker
• Exposed (black) processed film
• Cardboard
• Electric tape
• Sheet of hard plastic,1/8" thick

Instructions

1. Test your camera to ensure it is capable of taking infrared pictures. Point a TV or DVD remote control at your digital camera. Push one of the buttons on the remote and look through your camera. You should see a light coming from the remote. The brighter the light, the more sensitive your camera is to Infrared light and the better pictures it will take.

2. Fabricate your lens by finding some circular cardboard, like the cardboard insert on a toilet paper roll and cut it the length you desire for your lens. You can also make this by cutting cardboard strips the length of the desired circumference of your lens and rolling electric tape around it to fashion a lens housing. Make a second one, slightly smaller, that will fit snugly inside your first lens housing.

3. 

   Cut a ring out of your plastic sheet the size of your housing ring's circumstance. The ring should be sized to the outer big cardboard roll on the outside and the inner small cardboard roll on the inside. Glue the ring to the top of the lens housing.

4. Blacken every bit of all the parts you have made so far with your permanent black marker.

5. Cut two round pieces of the film so they fit inside the lens housing. Place the two pieces of cut film inside the lens housing so they are lying on the plastic piece, and then place the smaller cardboard lens piece down into the lens housing, wedging the film in place. You can experiment with more than two pieces of film to get a more filtered effect.

6. 

   Place your crafted infrared lens over your camera's lens and start taking photographs.

Tips & Warnings

• Experiment with the various settings on your camera. Faster ISO speeds will be crisper, but harder not to blur, while slower ISO speeds will produce grainier, more dream like images. To achieve images like those from traditional infrared film, set your camera for black and white mode and slow your ISO as low as it goes. A tripod will prevent blurring.

• If you have a zoom lens, be careful not to pin it down with your new infrared lens and burn out the motor.