With the right firmware and without IR filter, the M9M could produce colours.

[Paulus]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

At least that is what a friend of mine said.

 

 

He told me, that in his old profession the infrared cameras he used in the navy were also based on IR light which was converted into colours.

 

For instance, the IR sand radiates is more warm than the leaves on a tree. If one could develop a program which could translate this values into colours. of course it would be very difficult , but then a M9M Monochrome /Colour is born.

 

 

A little out of the box maybe, but could it be?

[Advertisement]

The Leica Q3 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo Video and Adorama

[jaapv]

Errr... no The MM is IR filtered...

[haroldp]

first the sensor cover glass would have to pass IR, then a filter that passed IR but blocked visible light would be helpful unless one only shot on moonless nights.

[pico]

Your friend might be referring to interpretation of IR data. Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of IR devices, one for optical applications, and another of strictly thermal. Different depths of IR. In optical devices, tree leaves in bright light usually reflect more light than sand.

 

To answer - out of the box and into the ditch for that one.

.

[adan]

We went through all this when the M8 came out and we were trying to remove the IR-based color casts (prior to the availability of the external IR filters).

 

There is no reliable correlation between IR light and visible colors.

 

Green leaves reflect IR

 

Black and gray cloth reflect IR

 

Blood vessels below the skin reflect IR

 

So if you get a high IR signature from an object, is its color green? blood-red? black or gray? No firmware can tell.

 

(Even if the built-in IR filter were removed).

[Richardgb]

You could, with any monochrome system, in theory and with static subjects, take 3 separate exposures through red, green, and blue separation filters respectively. These separated exposures could be recombined to form a full-colour image. This is the 'additive' colour system.

 

However, you would need to know the spectral sensitivity of the sensor and match the separation filters to suit to cover the full (visible) spectrum with equal intensity but without overlap (in practice, the overlap could only be minimized, not eliminated).

 

The additive colour system is, of course, the principle behind the colour-reproduction systems in cameras (film as well as electronic) and scanners, although they do so in technically different ways.

 

If you manage to do this with an M9M, then you would have a full-resolution (not interpolated), full-colour image.

 

Quite why anyone would spend their money on a monochrome camera and then spend their time trying to re-create colour images is another matter. But as they say, 'there's nowt so queer as folk!'

[pico]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

[...]

Black and gray cloth reflect IR

 

Yes, it amusing that the black synthetic fabric that many so-called para-military civilians buy is blaze-white under IR. I noticed this when using IR goggles in the darkroom. I got one of their packs to carry film holders and it just jumped out.

 

IR at night requires an IR light source and is not a good military tool - A unit with an IR source over the goggles is like wearing a target on your head.

 

Blood vessels below the skin reflect IR

 

Interesting. In my experience the vessels (veins) are dark and skin is light.

[haroldp]

You could, with any monochrome system, in theory and with static subjects, take 3 separate exposures through red, green, and blue separation filters respectively. These separated exposures could be recombined to form a full-colour image. This is the 'additive' colour system.

 

This is almost exactly what '3 sensor ' video cameras do, except they use a prism to separate the colors which are each captured by separate sensors without bayer arrays.

 

.... H

[sm23221]

Any idea why Leica decided to use an IR absorbing sensor cover?

[01af]

At least that is what a friend of mine said.

I'm afraid your friend has no clue what he's talking about.

 

 

... but could it be?

No.

 

 

Any idea why Leica decided to use an IR-absorbing sensor cover?

Because they want sharp pictures.

[Paulus]

Errr... no The MM is IR filtered...

 

That's a pity Jaap,

 

 

do you know why they put the IR filter in?

 

Sorry , I read that the answer is already given above.

[jaapv]

 

 

 

Interesting. In my experience the vessels (veins) are dark and skin is light.

The vessels may be, but Hemoglobin, like Chlorophyll, are excellent IR reflectors.

That's a pity Jaap,

 

 

do you know why they put the IR filter in?

 

 

 

 

They put an IR filter in to get the sharpest possible image. An IR image is focussed differently from visible light, creating an unsharp overlay over your sharp visible light photo. It is the mistake all " I take off IR filters for B&W" M8 shooters are making. By refusing to control contrast in postprocessing they take less sharp images than they could.

[pico]

Any idea why Leica decided to use an IR absorbing sensor cover?

 

To keep people from photographing other people through their clothes. There are, or were, forensic cameras and the manufacturer required buyers to sign a statement of intent, with cautions.

 

However, more likely it is to maintain 'normal' color response. IR sensitivity could really confuse overall rendering of certain scenes, especially landscapes in bright sunlight. Because IR is a long wave, it also would diminish resolution of those scenes. To use it 'normally' would require a cut-off filter.

[lars_bergquist]

Paulus, your friend has obviously had some superficial experience of thermal cameras, where various intensities of thermal radiation, when displayed, are assigned various colours to distinguish them – usually red for the highest intensities, all the way to deep blue for the lowest. But these 'false colours' are completely arbitrary and have nothing to do with real visual colours.

 

The fact is that an object that radiated only in the infrared or long-wave thermal would have no 'real' colour at all, because our human visual system assigns colour only to wavelengths from c. 400 nanometers to about 750 nm. Everything else is simply black.

 

The old man from the Visual Age

[luigi bertolotti]

You could, with any monochrome system, in theory and with static subjects, take 3 separate exposures through red, green, and blue separation filters respectively. These separated exposures could be recombined to form a full-colour image. This is the 'additive' colour system.

 

However, you would need to know the spectral sensitivity of the sensor and match the separation filters to suit to cover the full (visible) spectrum with equal intensity but without overlap (in practice, the overlap could only be minimized, not eliminated).

 

The additive colour system is, of course, the principle behind the colour-reproduction systems in cameras (film as well as electronic) and scanners, although they do so in technically different ways.

 

If you manage to do this with an M9M, then you would have a full-resolution (not interpolated), full-colour image.

 

Quite why anyone would spend their money on a monochrome camera and then spend their time trying to re-create colour images is another matter. But as they say, 'there's nowt so queer as folk!'

 

In another thread, I wrote that surely some M9-M user will try to make some test with the addictive principle... there are lot of well calibrated filters to choose from... a fascinating experiment that could bring to a sort of HDR/HCR images...

[01af]

... there are lot of well calibrated filters to choose from ...

Indeed. In particular, the Wratten filter system includes a few filters specifically for this purpose for decades now.

[sblitz]

they turned black and white movies into color, why not these photos? i have to believe that with the better software that exists today and starting from a digital photo it isn't all that difficult to achieve. not sure why you would want to, but the effect could be interesting.

[pico]

they turned black and white movies into color, why not these photos? i have to believe that with the better software that exists today and starting from a digital photo it isn't all that difficult to achieve. not sure why you would want to, but the effect could be interesting.

 

They colorized B&W films by choosing colors manually, then coloring the frames with computer assistance to keep the colors correct and to track some things from frame-to-frame, simplifying some of the task.

 

If you have Photoshop, take any B&W picture (a photo is best), set the mode for the whole image as RGB, then copy the layer and change that layer mode to 'Color' (far down the layer mode menu), choose a color and paint the layer copy with the brush! It is fun.

This is a poorly colorized B&W photo. I didn't like it enough to do a good job. But it can give you the idea.

[Advertisement]

Hallo,

Look here: Interesting Leica gear

[adli]

Pay a premium price for a monochrome camera , just to try to get mediocre color pictures out of it?

[pico]

SBlitz seems to be interested in the technology and theory. I would bet that he doesn't really want to colorize them.

.