I recently bought a Hoya 52mm Infrared RM72 lens filter to go along with my Fuji X-Pro1 and 35mm. Since it’s a mirrorless camera, it can be used for infrared photography right out of the box, but with some additional hardware modifications, the camera can be turned into an infrared powerhouse. Obviously I’m still a lightweight when it comes to infrared – I tired it out for the first time earlier today.

I’d be lying if I said I was pleased with the initial results… One thing I don’t understand is that my pictures looked different in the viewfinder than they did before the shots were taken. It’s something I noticed immediately after capture. This was not just a question of in-camera JPEG conversion – the RAW files also looked off. Here’s an example of one of the unprocessed shots I took. Infrared seems to be an understatement!

original unprocessed infrared capture

That same shot is one of those included in the gallery below. I processed them all in Lightroom, and as you can see, some significant color correction was needed. The two most biggest alternations were in white balance and camera calibration; otherwise, I just applied my standard tweaks.

For starters, I need to adjust my white balance before shooting. But other than that, I’m not sure if there’s anything else I can do before I push the shutter down. If anyone has any advice, please share. I plan to do some more research, and the next time I post something on infrared photography it should be better than this. Although for my first time, I don’t think these shots turned out that bad… even if they aren’t really what I was hoping for. Hopefully practice makes perfect. All I know for now is that I’m really glad I bought this filter!