SFX indoors

[Woolliscroft]

I need to take some IR pictures inside a church to try to bring out details of an ink tomb inscription now almost invisible in normal light. I plan to try Ilford SFX, with a Hoya R72 filter at least initially, rather than a true IR film.

I did a search on past threads and found a very useful site that Nick recomended here and the ISO ratings it gives for the filter (12 ISO) match my own experience. The trouble is that they assume outdoor use in direct light. Does anyone have any experience of using it indoors by indirect daylight? If so, can you recomend a setting? I'll be using a Mamiya 7II, which is not TTL metered. Obviously, whatever ISO I use, bracketing will be in order.

[The Circle Of Confusion]

I find the less direct the sunlight the lower the IR effect tends to be especially if it has been filtered through clouds. Bracket like mad, more over than under.

Also try using flash. This produces bags of IR. You can either filter the lens or filter the flashgun.

[Simon E.]

David, I wonder if you would be better with a film that has more extended IR sensitivity, such as Kodak HIE or Rollie IR, for instance.

Doesn't incandescent (tungsten) light give more IR, or is that just wrongly remembered? Lots of scope to experiement. Perhaps you can use another camera with TTL metering to establish a base exposure and then bracket extensively. Good luck.

[Woolliscroft]

Thanks, but there is no problem using a non TTL meter as long as you have a sensible ISO to work from.

I find that the more extended IR films don't add much more with this job, at least in day light, and SFX is so much easier to use as you don't have to load and unload it in the dark.

[Woolliscroft]

Well it worked. I got some quite nice shots at, wait for it, 0.5 ISO! There's a lot of reciprocity failure in that, no doubt, but 90 secs at f 5.6.