Olympus 2020
The early cameras from Olympus' line of Cx0y0 cameras, namely the 2000, 2020 and 2100 have been know to be excellent cameras,
both in IR and visible light. If you are thinking about a camera you can use for both, I can totally recommend the 2020.
The 2000 has a slightly worse user interface - but it is also slightly cheaper on ebay. The Nikon Coolpix 950 uses the same sensor/filter assembly and therefore is nearly indistinguishable in IR sensitivity. Choose the camera you like better...
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This comes straight from an Olympus 2020, automatic white balance. It already looks very nice, doesn't it? |
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This is the same picture, with the red&blue channels swapped. It now almost looks like a B&W (black and white) picture that has been slightly
coloured or a colour photo that has not been totally desaturated. But the IR atmosphere is still there. |
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With the Olympus 2020, I would recommend shooting coloured IR photos in Auto White Balance.
Colour gives you much more possibilities in postprocessing.
If you want B&W, you can use just about any image processing software. There are multiple ways to achieve
a B&W or greyscale picture. The most simple is to click "convert to greyscale" (or grayscale) and you are done.
Or you can set the saturation to 0%. You can change the colour before converting to greyscale. Turn up the blues? contrast? You should see for yourself what works best for you and the particular picture. (swapping channels does not make any difference, as converting to greyscale means: grey=(red+green+blue)/3. |
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This is basically the same picture in visible light, converted to greyscale. Very different from the converted IR photo. |
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And this is the original picture in visible light. |