23 filters tested for Infrared photography

White balance

All images were taken in RAW format and then white balanced in Adobe Camera RAW. The range of temperature and tint adjustments in ACR are often not enough to white balance infrared photos, where an extreme white balance adjustment is typically required. This can be remedied by using a custom camera profile with a pre-applied white balance adjustment, so I am including for each image in the comparison what white balance adjustment was baked into the profile used for each image. White balance was then set separately for each image on the clouds.

I will hopefully do some further tests in a later post to see if we can achieve the same white balance results in-camera, or if the white balance adjustments are too extreme. Using default white balance settings most of the images are extremely red or orange before they have been properly white balanced.

My understanding is that the colours in infrared + visible light images are dependent on your camera model (or manufacturer). So the results I got below with my Canon camera might have slightly different colours than if I had a full spectrum Sony / Nikon / Panasonic etc.

Zomei 950

We'll start off with a pure infrared filter, the Zomei 950nm filter. This gives a black and white image once white balanced. ACR profile used to enable white balancing was -25 Temp -100 Tint. Shutter speed was 1/4s.

Zomei 760

With the Zomei 760nm we start to see a little colour, but the image is basically monochrome. (I would say that actually you shouldn't see any colour at 760nm, indicating the Zomei filter is leaking some visible light). ACR profile used to enable white balancing was -50 Temp -75 Tint. Shutter speed was 1/100s.

Zomei 720

Moving down to 720nm we start to see quite a bit more colour. Again, we are probably getting a bit more visible light with this Zomei filter than you might get with a 720nm filter from another manufacturer. ACR profile used to enable white balancing was -100 Temp. Shutter speed was 1/100s.

Adding a 163° hue shift gives us a blue sky and slightly orange foliage:

Zomei 680

A 680nm filter passes some red light as well as infrared light, resulting in a more colourful image. ACR profile used to enable white balancing was -100 Temp. Shutter speed was 1/175s.

Swapping the red and blue channels gives us a blue sky with yellow foliage:

Or if we instead apply a ±180° hue shift we get a blue sky and orange foliage:

HB650

As we continue to reduce the wavelength at which we start letting light through, we get a more colourful image. ACR profile used to enable white balancing was -100 Temp. Shutter speed was 1/125s.

Using a +146° hue shift gives us pink foliage and a teal sky:

Or applying a -166° hue shift gives a blue sky and orange foliage:

Red R1

The red filter I tested is the Pigiron Red R1, but this should be pretty much the same as other Red / 25A filters, passing light with a wavelength longer than 580nm. ACR profile used to enable white balancing was -100 Temp. Shutter speed was 1/225s.

The Red 25A filter is traditionally used with a red - blue channel swap to give nice yellow foliage and a blue sky:

If we instead apply a ±180° hue shift we get orange foliage and a blue sky:

Or we can apply a +155° hue shift to get more of an Aerochrome / IR Chrome effect with red foliage:

CB565

The CB565 filter is an orange filter that passes light with a wavelength longer than 565nm. Other orange filters are likely to be pretty similar to this. ACR profile used to enable white balancing was -100 Temp. Shutter speed was 1/360s.

With an EIR channel swap (Red = Blue, Green = Red, Blue = Green) we get purple-pink foliage and a teal sky:

Or we can use a +119° Hue shift for the same effect:

Or with a +143° Hue shift we get a red foliage and blue sky aerochrome effect:

CB550

The CB550 is a slightly lighter orange filter that cuts light below 550nm. ACR profile used to enable white balancing was -100 Temp. Shutter speed was 1/360s.

Doing an EIR channel swap (Red = Blue, Green = Red, Blue = Green) gives a very similar result to what we saw with the CB565, giving bright pink foliage and a teal sky.

Using a +143° Hue shift also gives pretty much the same result as we saw with the CB565, with a blue sky and red foliage:

Lee 101 Yellow

The Lee 101 Yellow filter is a gel filter designed to be used with lights. I layered it with a cheap UV filter as I thought it would be too flexible / floppy to use in a filter ring without anything hard behind it to keep it straight. It is the closest thing I've been able to find to the old Lee #12 Yellow (Minus blue) gel filter that was designed for black and white photography. That filter no longer seems to be available, but the Lee 101 seems to give similar results. It cuts light approximately below 480nm. ACR profile used to enable white balancing was -100 Temp. Shutter speed was 1/380s.

The #12 Yellow filter is traditionally used with the EIR channel swap (Red = Blue, Green = Red, Blue = Green) to give an Aerochrome style image with blue skys and red foliage:

To reduce IR contamination in the green and blue channels of the resulting image, we can modify the channel mixer parameters slightly to: R=100B, G=150R-50B, B=150G-50B. (Using the yellow filter should give us R=R+IR, G=G+IR, B=IR, so by taking blue away from what we want to be non-IR channels we are removing / reducing the IR in them).

If instead of using a channel swap, we use a +109° Hue shift, we can achieve an image pretty much the same as the standard EIR channel swap:

Or we can use a +51° Hue shift to get purple foliage with a teal sky:

UG3 / ZB2 / Super blue

ZB2 is a filter that lets through violet / deep blue + UV light. ZB2 is the name used by the Chinese filter manufacturers, and it is roughly equivalent to the Schott UG3. This is a fairly standard infrared filter, commonly referred to as the 'Super blue' filter. ACR profile used to enable white balancing was -100 Tint. Shutter speed was 1/150s.

If we add a -32° Hue shift we remove some of the magneta tint from the sky, taking it to a more normal blue sky colour, and the foliage turns orange.

No filter (full spectrum)

Using no filter gives a rather 'muddy' image with brown foliage. I have played around with channel mixing and hue shifting on full spectrum images and haven't found anything I really liked. Below is just white balanced, and no special profile was needed for white balancing. Shutter speed was 1/640s.

Fluorescent / FLD

Fluorescent filters are designed to add a magenta tint to the image to compensate for the green tint of fluorescent lighting. I think I read somewhere it was a good filter for infrared, giving white foliage. However, that doesn't seem to be the case and the resulting image is quite boring in my opinion, similar to just a standard unfiltered full spectrum image. No special profile was needed in ACR for White balancing. Shutter speed was 1/400s.

Lee 139 + GRB3 / KG3 (Candy Chrome)

This filter is made from GRB3 / KG3 glass in 1mm thickness - this can be thought of as an ND filter for infrared light that does not affect visible light. GRB3 is the name used for the Chinese produced filters, while KG3 is the Schott designation. This is stacked with a Lee 139 Primary Green gel filter. It gives pink-purple foliage and teal skys when white balanced. No special white balance profile is needed. Shutter speed was 1/60s.

Lee Primary green seems to be the recommended filter to stack with KG3 for this effect: Hidden Realms - Make a better Candy Chrome. I have tried various green filters both with and without GRB3 / KG3 and the Primary Green with 1mm thick GRB3 did give me the best results.

Lee 729 + GRB3 / KG3 (IR Chrome)

This filter combines a 2mm thick GRB3 / KG3 filter with a Lee 729 Scuba blue gel. It gives results similar to Kolari's IR Chrome filter (which I would love to have but is too expensive for me to justify with the shipping and import costs to the UK). Foliage turns red and the sky is blue / slightly teal. Ref: Lee Blue filter test to get the Aerochrome Red in camera.

It is different from Aerochrome in that with IR Chrome reds stay red, but with Aerochrome reds are shifted to yellow. There is also the argument that 'Aerochrome' images should have magenta foliage rather than red, but in my mind it doesn't really matter. No special profile is needed for white balancing photos taken with this filter. Shutter speed was 1/40s.

Orange + GRB3 / KG3

This filter is one I made up myself, though no doubt others have also tried the same combination previously. It's made from 1.5mm of GRB3 / KG3 glass stacked with an orange filter. This results in an image that has a higher proportion of visible light light to infrared than just a standalone orange filter. Shutter speed was 1/100s.

If we apply an EIR channel swap (R=B, G=R, B=G) we get a similar result to what we saw with the orange CB565 filter, except that the colours are less saturated, which was not what I was expecting. ACR profile used to enable white balancing was -100 Temp.

If we instead apply a hue shift of +109°, this gives a similar result to the EIR channel swap, though slightly better colours in my opinion.

Alternatively, we can go with a more complicated channel mix of R=200R-50G-50B, G=200R-100B, B=200G-100B. This gives us a blue sky with purple foliage.

QB2 + GRB3 / KG3

This filter stack is comprised of a QB2 filter and 1mm thick GRB3 / KG3 filter. I think I purchased it from AliExpress as an 'aerochrome' filter. The results are not much like aerochrome in my opinion, but I do quite like the image it gives, with reddish orange foliage. No special profile was needed for white balancing. Shutter speed was 1/125s.

This next set of filter comparisons are based on filter stacks used by Marc del Piro, as detailed on his website truecolorinfrared.com. They combine a blue filter and a yellow filter to create a green one. The idea behind the filters is that you should be able to get results similar to the IR Chrome (Scuba Blue + GRB3) and Candy Chrome (Primary Green + GRB3) filters above.

However, I would say Marc's results with these filters are much better than what I got in these tests. Whether this is just down to differences in the way different canmeras handle colours, or there are some additional processing steps I am missing, I'm not sure.

The JB470 filter used in some of the stacks looks like this by itself:

And the QB19 filter by itself looks like this:

Finally, this last set of filter tests were done on a completely different day. These are just using plastic ND filters, which reduce visible light but have no affect on infrared light. No custom profile was needed for white balancing any of these images.

Comparison table

Image	Filter	ACR Profile	Hue shift / channel swap	Shutter speed
	CB550	-100 Temp	+143	1/360
	CB550	-100 Temp	R=B, G=R, B=G	1/360
	CB550	-100 Temp		1/360
	CB565	-100 Temp	+119	1/360
	CB565	-100 Temp	+143	1/360
	CB565	-100 Temp	R=B, G=R, B=G	1/360
	CB565	-100 Temp		1/360
	HB650 2mm	-100 Temp	+146	1/125
	HB650 2mm	-100 Temp	-166	1/125
	HB650 2mm	-100 Temp		1/125
	JSR FLD	Adobe Color		1/400
	JSR Orange 2mm + KG3/GRB3 1.5mm	-100 Temp	+109	1/100
	JSR Orange 2mm + KG3/GRB3 1.5mm	-100 Temp	R=B, G=R, B=G	1/100
	JSR Orange 2mm + KG3/GRB3 1.5mm	-100 Temp	R=200R-50G-50B, G=200R-100B, B=200G-100B	1/100
	JSR Orange 2mm + KG3/GRB3 1.5mm	-100 Temp		1/100
	Lee 101 Yellow + QB19 2mm	Adobe Color		1/280
	Lee 101 Yellow + QB3	Adobe Standard		1/80
	Lee 101 Yellow + UV cut	-100 Temp	+109	1/380
	Lee 101 Yellow + UV cut	-100 Temp	+51	1/380
	Lee 101 Yellow + UV cut	-100 Temp	R=100B, G=150R-50B, B=150G-50B	1/380
	Lee 101 Yellow + UV cut	-100 Temp	R=B, G=R, B=G	1/380
	Lee 101 Yellow + UV cut	-100 Temp		1/380
	Lee 139 Primary Green + KG3/GRB3 1mm	Adobe Color		1/60
	Lee 729HT Scuba blue + KG3/GRB3 2mm	Adobe Standard		1/40
	None	Adobe Color		1/640
	None	Adobe Color		1/125
	ND0.3	Adobe Color		1/100
	ND0.6	Adobe Color		1/80
	ND0.9	Adobe Color		1/50
	QB19 2mm + JB470	Adobe Color		1/280
	QB2 2mm + KG3/GRB3 1mm	Adobe Standard		1/125
	QB3 + JB470	Adobe Color		1/50
	QB3 + KG3/GRB3 1mm	-25 Temp, -100 Tint		1/125
	Red R1	-100 Temp	155	1/225
	Red R1	-100 Temp	-180	1/225
	Red R1	-100 Temp	R=B, G=G, B=R	1/225
	Red R1	-100 Temp		1/225
	UG3/ZB2	-100 Tint	-32	1/150
	UG3/ZB2	-100 Tint		1/150
	Zomei 680	-100 Temp	-180	1/175
	Zomei 680	-100 Temp	R=B, G=G, B=R	1/175
	Zomei 680	-100 Temp		1/175
	Zomei 720	-100 Temp	+163	1/100
	Zomei 720	-100 Temp		1/100
	Zomei 760	-50 Temp -75 Tint		1/100
	Zomei 950	-25 Temp -100 Tint		1/4

Summary / Conclusion

What I tested here was only a very small sample of possible filters and filter combinations. When you add all the various post processing changes you can make as well, the possibilities for different colour combinations are almost endless.

Out of the ones I tested, I like both CB565 (Orange) and Lee 101 (Yellow) for the Red foliage blue sky look and they are also good for the Candy pink foliage teal sky look. A red filter is good for the yellow foliage and blue sky look. Full spectrum plus a plastic ND4 is nice for slightly pink tinted white foliage and blue sky.

The 'IR Chrome' Lee 729 + 2mm GRB3 and the 'Candy Chrome' Lee 139 + 1mm GRB3 both give nice results that don't require any special processing, but I don't like the amount of light these filter stacks cut. I like shooting handheld, and so want to keep my shutter speed high to avoid blur from camera shake. Both could be good for video meaning you might not need a separate ND filter to keep your shutter speed around 1/60s.

I can't come to any firm conclusion about which filters will be best for me yet, that will have to wait until I've tested if I can get the white balance in-camera. And see how channel / hue adjustments affect the images in video. Ideally I want filters that can be used for both stills and video. I don't think I will test so many filters for this, but hopefully I can get to testing this soon.