Fuji GSW690 Infrared

I loaded my Fuji GSW690 with a roll of Ilford SFX infrared film and put an IR72 filter on the lens. Rangefinder and twin lens reflex cameras are ideal for infrared photography because you don't look through the filter to take the shot. As those of you who have tried it will know, an IR72 filter is impossible to see through!

The film has a base speed of ISO 200 but I set my meter to ISO 3 to allow for the filter. I then add to add extra time to allow for reciprorcity failure and a bit more time on top of that to allow for much of the scene being shaded by trees, so the infrared light was being absorbed by the canopy. For this shot the exposure was about 4 minutes at f16. The lens has an infrared index mark so setting the focus was easy.

After developing the film I discovered the lens has a bit of a low contrast "hot spot" in the centre of the frame when shooting infrared. Many lenses including modern ones for digital cameras do this, and it's worse at smaller apertures. I was shooting at f16 to get the required depth of field. The aberration is easily corrected in Lightroom after scanning the negative but would be hard to correct when printing in the darkroom as the contrast needs to be increased in the centre, along with reduced exposure.

The end result is very pleasing, so for a hybrid workflow I can recommend this camera for infrared work.