Friday Postcard: Lisbon Botanical Garden
Captured in infrared with my iPhone
Today’s photo comes to you courtesy of my recent trip to Spain and Portugal. We had some independent exploration time one morning, and a few of us decided to walk from our hotel to the Lisbon Botanical Gardens. It wasn’t really a far walk, but there were lots of hills and stairs to climb in order to get there!
In order to keep my kit light, I carried only my OM-1 Mark 2 and 12-100mm f/4 lens. I also, of course, carried my iPhone 17 Pro Max. I recently outfitted my iPhone with a case from Moment, along with their Quick-Lock Filter Holder. This setup allows me to use traditional 67mm ring-mounted filters on my iPhone. I purchased a 720nm IR cut filter from Kolari Vision, and screwed it into the filter holder.
When you put an IR cut filter on a regular camera, almost no visible light passes through the lens. This is very problematic with DSLR cameras (you can’t see through the viewfinder), but the iPhone camera has enough sensitivity to display an image on the screen. Because the exposure is so dark, the iPhone will kick into “Night Mode,” and take a long exposure, usually around 1-5 seconds. Nevertheless, the iPhone does a great job of keeping things steady, and if you use RAW capture, you can get a pretty good file. That’s what I did here!
Technical Notes
iPhone 17 Pro Max with Kolari 720nm infrared filter mounted in a Moment filter holder
Captured in RAW and processed in Adobe Lightroom Classic using the Apple ProRaw (monochrome) profile
Sharpened and tinted in Adobe Photoshop using Topaz Photo and Nik 8 Color Efex
GPS Location: 38°43’4.2096” N 9°8’58.5384” W