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As stated previous normal photographic lenses are designed for visible light photography and can sometimes behave quite strangely in infrared light. This page covers the most common lens problems when photographing in IR light. Just something for you to think about and be aware of when working in infrared.
Lens hot spots is the most common problem encountered when shooting infrared light. They usually manifest in the form of a bright circle, sometimes in the shape of aperture leaves directly in the center of the image. The problem is exaggerated as you stop down (increase f stop number), with the spot becoming more prominent and defined.
Hot spots can be caused for a variety of reasons, the most common of which is the coating on the inside of the lens barrel being reflective in IR light. Another frequent reason is light interaction between the coatings of the lens elements. A less common reason is light interaction between the lens elements and the imaging sensor (usually the micro-lenses) in the camera. In this case using the lens on one camera model may have no hot spot issues and on another model there could be prominent hot spots.
Unfortunately, if your lens has this issue the only solution is to simply use a different lens altogether. Fortunately the majority of lenses don’t have this problem or the problem is very minor and normally not visible in images. We are compiling a list of lenses we recommend people avoid as they have been proven to have hot spots with every model and lens copy below.
CANON LENSES 50mm 1.4 16-35mm 2.8 16-35mm 2.8 II 20-35mm 2.8 28-70mm 2.8 24-70mm 2.8 II At smaller apertures only NIKON LENSES 24-70mm 2.8 35mm 1.8 24-85mm AF-S 3.5-4.5G ED VR SONY LENSES E PZ 16-50mm F3.5-5.6 OSS Power Zoom Sonnar T FE 35mm f/2.8 ZA FE 28-70mm f3.5/-5.6 OSS Sony 85mm f/1.4 GM stopped down past f/4 OLYMPUS LENSES 45mm 1.8 7-14mm (Bad distortion between 7-10mm) PANASONIC LENSES N/A FUJIFILM LENSES 18-55mm XF 10-24mm f/4 R OIS LensFor more information about lenses, visit our hotspot lens testing database. We are constantly updating it with more information about various lenses.
Since on point and shoots the lens is a permanently attached part of the camera if there is a hot spot you pretty much have to rule out using that camera model. This is the main reason we only convert a limited range of point and shoot models. Below is a list of known P&S camera models to have a hotspot:
CANON P&S CAMERAS N/A NIKON P&S CAMERAS N/A SONY P&S CAMERAS RX100, RX100 II and RX100 III: Detected hot spot only at telephoto portion of lens (zoomed all the way in) at smaller apertures. Increasing ISO further defined the hot spot. OLYMPUS P&S CAMERAS N/A PANASONIC P&S CAMERAS N/A FUJIFILM P&S CAMERAS N/A
You may have noticed in your images of buildings that sometimes the vertical or horizontal lines seem bent, especially at the edges of the image, this is barrel distortion and is present to some degree in all wide angle lenses. As a rule of thumb the wider the angle, the more distorted the image.
These distortions are also present in IR and in some cases are more pronounced due to the longer wavelengths.
Let’s proceed to the next section:
NEXT – Camera Considerations
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