The Infrared XA2 Experiment – Round 2

Notice! This post is part of a series about shooting an Olympus XA2 with Infrared Flash. If this is the first page you are visiting on the subject of infrared blash, it may be beneficial to start with the summary post of the series.

In this round of the great infrared flash experiment, I will go over how I have pursued the Next Steps points from the previous infrared flash post.

A mountable R72/89b filter.

I didn't think that spending $200 on an 89B gel would mesh well with my goal of doing this infrared conversion cheaply. I also wasn't too excited at the prospect of having to grind down a cheap Chinese glass R72 filter and finding a way to mount it on the flash. I did some more research and discovered that the Ilford SFX A gel filter was roughly equivalent to a R72 filter. As fate would have it, they are currently available at Amazon for $9.99 each. Cheap, and not a pain in the ass to get mounted over the flash.

Larger Flash

I found someone selling an Olympus A16 flash at a reasonable price, and purchased it. Simple enough.

Break down and buy the more expensive film.

No advancements here. Still using the Rollei 400.

Putting it all together

Using the same conversion method as in my original post about modifying an Olympus XA2 for infrared flash use, I affixed the SFX A gel over the A16 flash. With careful cutting and planning, I think that it should be possible to get three, or maybe even four proper sized gels for the A16 flash from one 58x58 Ilford SFX A gel.

After rigging up the camera, I did the same test exposure pattern as outlined in the second post about modifying an Olympus XA2 for Infrared flash use.

The results from the test photos where similar. The range of the flash was a bit better with the A16, but it didn't appear to be my a large margin. Still, every extra inch helps.

I did learn something new from these test photos though. What I learned is that incandescent lights put out a lot of infrared light. So shooting in a room with the lights on created a nice balancing effect of the background and flashed subject, and I still looked like a zombie.

I had intended to do some real world shooting with the A16 and SFX A combination, and put the results into this post. However, the shooting session I did with it resulted in me learning a lot more about this set up then I had anticipated. So for now I am leaving this post as-is, and am saving the results from the real world shoot for a post all its own.