I picked up a Hoya R72 infra red filter (which looks black) and tried it on my VX2000. I haven't had time to play with it much but, for example, with R72 filter in place my VX2000 can clearly "see" the electric burners on my stove, the infrared emitted by my television remote, etc. Has anyone fooled around with one of these?

On dpreview.com, there is a lot of discussion about doing still infrared photography with the Canon 10D. One technique, which produces a marvelous false-color effect, involves inverting the red and blue channels in Photoshop. See, e.g. http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1019&message=6444180. I can't think of any easy way to do this in Premiere 6.5, except to export the clip to Photoshop as a filmstip and manipulate it there. Will AfterEffects or Commotion Pro allow swapping of color channels?

<<<-- Originally posted by Paul Tauger : I picked up a Hoya R72 infra red filter (which looks black) and tried it on my VX2000. I haven't had time to play with it much but, for example, with R72 filter in place my VX2000 can clearly "see" the electric burners on my stove, the infrared emitted by my television remote, etc. Has anyone fooled around with one of these?
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What the IR filter really does, Paul, is block the visible light and transmit the IR. Since the IR filter (that blocks IR) that is in front of the CCDs in your camera is not blocking all the IR, you can see hot objects. Probably not body heat though. If you have a NightShot-capable camera and place that filter on the camera lens while in NightShot mode, you should be able to see fainter IR images (objects that are cooler) but probably not like the IR cameras on the police helicopters. Those have cooled CCD sensors.
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thats is awsome how much did that filter cost?

Mike, what's interesting about the R72 is that, though blocking all visible light, the camera is still quite sensitive in the infrared regions. I used to do B&W infrared still photography with special infrared film. I picked up the Hoya filter to try the same thing with my digital still camera. It does it quite well, but also offers some interesting opportunities for creating full, albeit false, color pictures. I think I'll be able to do the same thing with the VX2000.

Joel, the filter was only $43 or so. I got it on eBay from 47th St. Photo. It's 58mm.