Infrared Pictures with a Digital Camera
March Meeting 2010
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Meeting Press Releases
WASHINGTON, D.C. — X-ray images of famous paintings reveal a host of details, such as corrections or underdrawings made by the artist. Such imaging research can be painstaking to set up. Charles Falco of the University of Arizona will show how infrared pictures can be made using relatively simple adaptations to a common digital camera. This is possible since many paints are at least partially transparent to near-IR waves.
A camera sensitive to waves (830-1100 nm) just beyond the visible can reveal details on the canvas that no one has glimpsed in centuries. The trick is replacing the low-pass filter used in many digital cameras (allowing visible light but blocking IR) with a high-pass filter (one allowing IR but blocking visible). Some extra steps in focusing and in setting apertures are necessary for producing accurate pictures. (Copies of Falco’s recent article in Review of Scientific Instruments will be available in the pressroom.)
Related March Meeting Session
Abstract: Q3.00003 : Imaging in the Infrared
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The American Physical Society is the leading professional organization of physicists, representing more than 48,000 physicists in academia and industry in the United States and internationally. APS has offices in College Park, MD (Headquarters), Ridge, NY, and Washington, D.C.
About AIP
Headquartered in College Park, MD, the American Institute of Physics is a not-for-profit membership corporation chartered in New York State in 1931 for the purpose of promoting the advancement and diffusion of the knowledge of physics and its application to human welfare.
