Two of the most common questions from photographers new to infrared are: "why does my infrared image look red?" and "how do I expose correctly for infrared?" Both come down to understanding how infrared light behaves differently from visible light, and how to configure your camera to work with it effectively. This guide covers white balance and exposure settings for infrared photography in detail. For a guide to which filters to use in the first place, see: Essential Filters for a Full Spectrum Camera.
Why Infrared Images Look Red (and What to Do About It)
When you take an infrared photograph — particularly with a 590nm or 680nm filter — the raw image straight out of the camera typically has a strong red or magenta cast. This is completely normal and expected. It happens because the camera's sensor is more sensitive to some infrared wavelengths than others, and because the camera's colour channels (red, green, and blue) respond differently to infrared light. For a deeper explanation of why this happens, read: Why Does My Full Spectrum Camera Have a Colour Cast?
At shorter infrared wavelengths (590nm, 680nm), a significant amount of visible red light passes through the filter alongside the infrared light. The camera's red channel captures this strongly, producing the characteristic red cast. At deeper infrared wavelengths (720nm, 850nm), the image tends towards a more uniform red-orange or monochrome appearance, as less visible light passes through.
The solution is white balance — either set in-camera before shooting, or corrected in post-processing. Getting white balance right is the key to unlocking the distinctive infrared look you're after.
Setting a Custom White Balance In-Camera
Setting a custom white balance in-camera before shooting has two significant advantages: it gives you a much more accurate preview of the final image on your camera's screen, and it makes post-processing significantly easier by starting from a more neutral colour baseline.
Here's how to set a custom white balance for infrared photography:
- Attach your infrared filter to the lens
- Point the camera at a green subject in bright sunlight — a lawn, a hedge, or any area of healthy green vegetation works perfectly. Green foliage reflects infrared light very strongly and provides an ideal white balance reference for infrared photography.
- Take a test exposure of the green subject, filling as much of the frame as possible
- Go to your camera's custom white balance menu and select this image as the white balance reference. On Sony cameras, this is typically found under Shoot → White Balance → Custom. On Canon and Nikon, the process is similar but the menu location varies by model — consult your camera manual.
- Set the white balance to your custom setting and take a test shot
With a correctly set custom white balance, foliage will appear white or near-white in your infrared images, the sky will appear dark, and the overall colour balance will be much closer to the classic infrared look straight out of the camera. It won't be perfect as there are limitations to a camera's white balancing bandwidth, and you may get error messages, but it has still been done!
White Balance by Infrared Wavelength
The appropriate white balance approach varies depending on which infrared filter you're using:
590nm — Super Colour Infrared
The 590nm filter passes a significant amount of visible red and orange light alongside infrared, producing images with rich, warm colour. A custom white balance set on green foliage will produce images with golden-yellow foliage, deep blue skies, and warm skin tones — the distinctive "super colour" infrared look. This filter produces the most colourful infrared images and is the most rewarding for colour infrared work.
In post-processing, a channel swap (swapping the red and blue channels in Photoshop or similar) is a popular technique with 590nm images, producing the classic false-colour infrared look with blue foliage and warm skies.
680nm — Enhanced Colour Infrared
The 680nm filter passes less visible light than 590nm, producing a stronger infrared effect with more muted colour. A custom white balance on green foliage produces images with pale yellow or white foliage and darker skies than 590nm. Colour channel swapping is also effective with 680nm images, though the colour palette is different from 590nm.
720nm — Classic Infrared
The 720nm filter is the classic infrared wavelength, producing the iconic black and white infrared look with brilliant white foliage and near-black skies. Some colour information is retained at 720nm, and a custom white balance can produce subtle colour infrared effects, but most photographers use 720nm for black and white infrared work. In post-processing, convert to black and white and adjust the channel mixer to taste.
850nm and Beyond — Deep Infrared
At 850nm and deeper wavelengths, virtually no visible light passes through the filter. Images are essentially monochrome at capture, with very little colour information. White balance has minimal effect on the colour rendering — these filters are used almost exclusively for black and white infrared work, night vision imaging, and scientific applications.
White Balance in Post-Processing
If you shoot in RAW — which you always should for infrared photography — white balance can be adjusted freely in post-processing without any quality loss. This gives you complete flexibility to experiment with different white balance settings after the fact.
In Lightroom, Capture One, or any RAW processor, the white balance eyedropper tool is your friend. Click on an area of green foliage in your infrared image and the software will set the white balance to neutralise that area — producing a result similar to the custom in-camera white balance described above.
From this neutral starting point, you can then adjust the white balance temperature and tint sliders to taste, shift the colour palette in different directions, and experiment with channel swapping in Photoshop to achieve different infrared colour effects. For a full guide to processing your infrared images, read: How to Post-Process Infrared Photos — A Beginner's Guide.
Exposure Settings for Infrared Photography
One of the great practical advantages of modern mirrorless cameras for infrared photography is that the metering system works directly with whatever light reaches the sensor — including infrared light. Whether you're using a full spectrum camera with an external filter or a dedicated infrared conversion, the camera's auto exposure system meters through the filter and exposes correctly for the infrared scene. Handheld shooting is perfectly practical across all infrared wavelengths, and auto exposure modes work reliably.
Metering Modes for Infrared
In most cases, evaluative or matrix metering works well for infrared photography — the camera exposes the scene based on the infrared light it sees, just as it would for any normal scene. However, scenes with large areas of bright infrared-reflective foliage can occasionally fool the metering system into underexposing. In these situations, use exposure compensation (+1 to +2 stops) to correct for this, or switch to manual exposure and use the histogram to judge the correct exposure.
The histogram is your most reliable exposure guide for infrared photography. Infrared images typically have a brighter histogram than equivalent visible-light images due to the strong infrared reflectance of foliage and other subjects — this is normal. Aim for a histogram that is well-exposed without clipping highlights.
ISO for Infrared Photography
For infrared photography in good daylight, ISO 100–400 is typically sufficient across all filter wavelengths. In lower light or for very fast action, higher ISO values can be used as needed. Use the lowest ISO that gives you a usable exposure to minimise noise, which is more visible in the smooth tonal gradations typical of infrared images than in standard colour photography.
Aperture for Infrared Photography
Aperture choice in infrared photography follows the same principles as standard photography, with one additional consideration: some lenses exhibit infrared hotspots at certain apertures. If your lens produces a hotspot — a brighter circular area in the centre of the frame — stopping up (using a larger aperture, lower f-number) often reduces or eliminates it. f/8 to f/5.6 is a good starting point for infrared photography, typically giving good optical quality, manageable depth of field, and reduced hotspot risk. For advice on choosing lenses that perform well for infrared, see: The Best Lenses for Full Spectrum and Infrared Photography.
Shooting in RAW — Essential for Infrared
Shooting in RAW is important for all photography, but it's particularly critical for infrared. The strong colour casts, unusual tonal relationships, and white balance requirements of infrared photography make RAW files essential — the flexibility to adjust white balance, exposure, and colour in post-processing without quality loss is invaluable. JPEG files, with their fixed in-camera processing and compressed data, are simply not adequate for serious infrared work.
If you're new to infrared photography and finding the results confusing or disappointing, the combination of a custom white balance and RAW shooting will make an immediate and dramatic difference to both your in-camera preview and your post-processing results.
Explore our range of full spectrum converted cameras and infrared filters to get started with infrared photography, and get in touch if you have questions about settings or technique.