I've been on a journey for a number of years and at an expense I don't really want to think about. My quest has been to find a camera and system for infrared that I'd be completely happy with. There are many people that shoot infrared and I see some amazing examples with different camera systems. While I feel like I have also taken some noteworthy images in the past, I have never been completely happy with the camera and/or lenses I was shooting with. I won't go into great detail about each system rather I'll least a short summary below.
Also note, in my early days I did not think I would be interested in color infrared, that has now changed.
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I have had several EOS M cameras in infrared. A Canon EOS M (590nm), a Canon EOS M6 (830nm) and a Canon EOS M5 (720nm). So why did I sell each of these? I wanted better battery life and DR than the Canon EOS M offered. With the M6, I felt like I was pigeon-holed with shooting B&W and with the M5, I could never really learn to process the 720nm files very well. Also, for some reason I didn't like the little differences between the M5 and M6 (I am partial to the M6).
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Next was Fuji. I've had an X-T20 (590nm), X-T30 (590nm) and most recently and X-T3 (full spectrum). I honestly thought the X-T3 was going to be it but I was never happy with the lenses. There were certain lenses that were supposed to perform well and they just didn't for me. Also, I kept battling hotspots with all of the zoom lenses I used.
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Sony a6000 (470nm), a6500 (full spectrum). I started with the a6000 and accidentally purchased it at 470nm. I thought it was 590nm. Anyways, I had seen a little info about the 18-135mm and how it was good for IR. That was the ideal lens for me. Well, it turns out the lens is not good from an IQ standpoint. I honestly don't know why I decided to graduate to an a6500 but it was a waste.
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Next, I shoot with a Nikon Z7 for regular color. I had read about how there are readout lines on images in infrared but I took the chance and failed. I immediately saw the readout lines and regretted my decision. Luckily, I was able to get it converted back to regular color but I wasted money to do two conversions just to find that out for myself.
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So that brings me to about a month and a half ago when I got my M6 (full spectrum) and started shooting with it (again). Maybe it's my history with the EOS M system (I have shoot with it for many, many years) but it just works for me. The lenses do good in IR (15-45mm, 55-200mm, 22mm). I don't have to worry about hotspots as I have not seen any with these lenses.
I think what's always drawn me to the M system is the image quality for your money. The lenses are very affordable and because the optics in most are pretty basic, most work good for IR. There are even some Chinese lenses I am trying (Rockstar 10mm f8 fisheye, Astrohori 14mm f4.5 coming soon).
While sometimes the images may not be amazing when you pixel-peep them, I feel like as a system overall, it's the one that I have finally come home to.
Here are just a few images I've taken in the month and a half I've had my M6.