this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2025
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On my medium-format digital system, I'm capturing so much resolution to start with that I don't generally worry about the possibility that I might lose a bit of detail in a rare subject that the Bayer filter performs poorly on.
But there's another advantage to achromatic sensors, which is the real reason I have one.
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Achromatic sensors generally lack not only a color filter, but also the "hot mirror" ("high pass") filter that blocks infrared light from hitting the sensor. Normally, you want to filter out IR light; it focuses at a slightly different plane, and so can make daylight photos seem burry if you don't filter it out. But having an IR filter permanently attached to the sensor means you can't capture past the visible part of the spectrum.
And this forecloses making some interesting photos.
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IR photography is a bit of a niche, and is easier to do badly than well, but when done well, it creates some very interesting creative options. With the optical spectrum filtered out, a clear sky at midday contains very little IR and renders as almost completely black. Most plants, on the other hand, reflect IR extremely well, and render as almost completely white. And IR light reflects off other objects differently than does the visible spectrum.
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@mattblaze@federate.social I don't know if you do people/portraits but IR is interesting there too because skin is quite translucent around the 800-900nm band. Strong lighting can glow through skin, which looks quite alien and beautiful in some contexts.
@phenidone@mstdn.social Yeah, it's not the sort of work I do, but I've seen some really stunning IR portrait photos.