Always in a constant search for new ways to produce the iconic imagery of Kodak infrared Aerochrome film, I thought up an interesting method that only requires an iPhone, a 720nm Infrared filter, and some kind of Photoshop software!
Video Guide
The video goes into detail on the exact process, but a quick summary is that we need to take two images with the smartphone. One normal image and one with the 720nm infrared filter. This filter block almost all visible light while passing the red channel through. This means that even with the camera’s native IR cut filters not all of the infrared light is being removed.
This process is similar to my Tri-Aerochrome film filter but we only need to take two images and replace the color red channel with the red channel of the infrared image.
Film Method Reference
Once the images have been captured we can import them into Affinity Photo or Photoshop as an image stack. This stack performs the course alignment but tweaks may be needed so having a live adjustment layer that you can use to warp the perspective is necessary. Shooting on a tripod (like in the video) helps considerably, but is a more bulky setup.
From there we can use channel mixers to remove the red channel from the color image, and the green and blue channels from the IR image. This will give you the course look but I took it a step further and used a curves layer to correct for the color casts, then used a selective color adjustment to shift the infrared foliage back to the reddish hue I find desirable.
Then just repeat, but I would suggest creating a lut from the selective color layer just to speed things up. Below is a small gallery of images I created while out on a walk, hope you enjoy, and happy experimenting!
Example Gallery
Want to Shoot Film on your iPhone?
If you liked this post and want to try shooting some Aerochrome-like film on your iPhone consider purchasing my 36Exp film camera app now available on the iOS App Store!
