Should I use my IR filter for night photography?

[arthurpreston]

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Hi everyone. I just received my second (at no extra cost) uv/ir filter. I've been doing some night photography, outdoors, and wondering if I should leave the filter on, or take it off? Typically I have photographed lighted building exteriors, etc. and have had good luck without any filter. I've read on another forum that I probalby lose 1/2 an f-stop, and have found that to be true for daytime stuff; seems like it might really make night photos difficult - what is your experience? Thank you in advance

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[etrigan63]

I have UV/IR filters on all of my lenses and take night shots without issues. Here are some lowlight higher ISO examples:

 

[erl]

Using an IR cut filter will not reduce your effective ISO value. IR is not part of the visible spectrum and you are attempting to record what is visible.

 

IR can be quite prevalent in tungsten/artificial light so you may find it gives an appreciable shift or bias (magenta) to some of your pictures. Best/easiest technique is to put a filter on all lenses used on the M8 and leave them there.

[Jamie Roberts]

Hey Arthur--

 

Earl is right. I haven't noticed anything like a meter change due to IR filters. Not even half a stop (actually, that's a lot in some places).

 

Anyway, the ONLY time I take the filter off is if I have a ton of point-source light as the main light source (so think an 80th birthday party with candles on the cake) because you can get reflections with any filter on the lens.

 

But that's it. I shoot at night all the time, and I leave the filters on.