 Today's episode is sponsored by Squarespace. All right, what's up? No, Monica, I didn't literally mean what's above me. All right, what's up? Today we're gonna be shooting Aerochrome with a catch. The catch is it's not actually Aerochrome, it's something far, far cheaper. For those that don't know, here's a quick recap on Aerochrome, infrared sensitive color, flaming hot mountain dew, yada, yada, yada. Great, now that we're all caught up, let's go ahead and shoot with this, a Rideau 3D camera. This camera takes three photos simultaneously and it's typically used for those like wiggle, gif kind of things that you see on Instagram sometimes. But theoretically, if you place the right filters in front of each of the three lenses, you can get something that's kind of, that kind of looks like Aerochrome. I'll let Future Jason explain. Well, the gold rush for an Aerochrome replacement is well upon us. And here's another concept that may or may not work. We'll see, here's how it works. Essentially, it's a 3D printed adapter that allows you to stack filters in front of the lenses of the Rideau so that you can take the same shot simultaneously with three different filtrations. It's trichrome, basically, except all the shots are taken within the same sliver of time so you don't get those chromatic movement ghosts. So what if, with this technique, we could parse out an infrared image, a red-filtered image, and a green-filtered image? In that case, if you were to combine them, you would have something that is like Aerochrome. This whole concept was definitely not my idea. My IQ is so low I couldn't even find the test. It was Tom's idea, not my space Tom. But this guy, who has a blog detailing the process, which will be linked in the description if you wanna read up on it. I believe he's already working on a version two and he's already put out a video, kind of going over the process. However, in this video, we're gonna be detailing the version one, which is essentially the same concept. I'll get into the who, what, where, wombo, and why later. Let's hit the field, where Baxter took a dump so big that he's finally walking normally again. Well, normal for him in those tiny yet powerful legs. Today, we're gonna be using Rolly Infred 400, a black-and-white film stock that I have kind of a traumatic history with. Littering in the park is cool. Black-and-white Infred is basically all that exists for fresh Infred film these days. And you basically have two options, Ilford SFX 200 and Rolly Infred 400. We're choosing Rolly Infred because it is technically a stop faster and thus more sensitive, which is pretty crucial because the Rideau has a shutter speed of 1,125th and like an aperture of F10 or something like that. So it's not exactly a speedy, low-light piss missile of a camera. Thus, whatever ISO help that we can get on the back end will be greatly appreciated. Anyway, after giving Baxter some Gatorade, because Electrolites is what plants and dogs crave, I headed out to shoot some local plant life at the park. Cool, first impressions. Yeah, the Rideau isn't exactly a top-tier, light-tight box either apparently, but that certainly looks like Aerochrome. Hard to mistake it honestly. You got the red foliage and weirdly tinted blue sky that doesn't really make any sense as to how it's still blue, considering how the layers are stacked on Aerochrome, but whatever, this technique works surprisingly well. This looks cool, but here's where we run into one of the biggest limitations of this process. Parallax, which like laxatives, if you have too much of you'll have a sh** time. Let's call it the parallaxive effect. Basically, the Rideau's lenses are spaced just millimeters apart from one another, so while they are taking virtually the same photo, they do all have a different angle of view and thus are all a very slightly shifted perspective from one another, which means that some of your photos will not actually line up perfectly based on the distance of the photo taken. So while Monica lines up perfectly here, the background does not, and we get some chromatic separation. To avoid this, I guess just try and only shoot things that are at a minimum of 15 feet away, otherwise you're likely to get that weird looking phase effect from Ant-Man ghost protocol or whatever. Although that 15 feet trick isn't always a guarantee that you won't still get some parallaxive effect. This shot is absolutely fantastic. It just looks so surreal. Might be a fresh and piping hot portfolio slapper. So yeah, here's another limitation of the process, really more of the camera light itself. This technique only really works in direct bright ass daylight, and even then it's still kinda underexposed. I don't know if this is gonna turn out, it's pretty dim over there, but we'll try it. That day it was super bright, unlike this channel's future, and some of the shots really didn't even still have shadow information. If you try to shoot this camera or technique in cloudy or overcast conditions, you're gonna get f***ed and publicly humiliated. It's just like what Evil Nike always says, just don't do it. Anyway, with Baxter's crack-like addiction to Gatorade fueling him, we made our way around the park looking for more compositions that were 15 feet away or so. The lens quality on the Redos isn't exactly top tier either. It's ass glass if I were to summarize it, but I guess it's really not too bad in the center. I'm pretty sure these are plastic single element lenses, but it kinda works here because we're working with half frame here, so don't really have too much resolution to begin with. After sniping a 3D over the fence and no scope of the gardens there where photographers aren't permitted, I started to realize how effective this technique is and plotted to build out a second camera. So how does one procure one of these infrared slammers? Arts and crafts, that's how. Well, for starters, you need a Rideau 3D camera and the lens filter adapter, which you can download from Tom's website. You'll just have to find a way to print it yourself. Preferably you want it to be the same color as the camera, but that's just my hypnotic flair for design talking. Now you'll need filters. This is the hardest part by far. You'll need a 39 millimeter IR cut filter and a 52 millimeter Hoya R72 filter. Look for one that has these notches on it to make your life a little bit easier. You'll also need a red and green filter. I found some tiny microscope filters on eBay that do the job wonderfully. They're about a quarter inch in diameter and are very high quality. In a pinch, you can use red lighting gel cut to size for the red filter and it'll work just fine. Go ahead and put the green and red filter into the slots to secure your green and red filtered images and then add the 39 millimeter IR cut filter behind them so we don't get any additional IR bleed into those streams. Now we need to disassemble the R72 filter to just get the glass. The R72 filter is crucial because it only allows infrared light to pass through. You're kind of on your own here with getting the glass out. Sometimes there is a notch and you can use a spanner wrench or something to remove the retaining ring. Other times it's just a total f***ing nightmare. Then I just cut some double-sided tape to thin strips and secure the adapter on the front of the camera making sure the holes line up to the lenses. Now you're ready to go out and shoot or throw it at cars and run away just like the teenagers in my neighborhood. Anyway, once you're done shooting and you've made your girlfriend carry back or back to the car because he's a princess, it's time to process your negatives into air chrome. One thing that you should absolutely do with your role is ask your lab to push it one stop. It makes a huge difference. If you don't, your negatives will be very thin. I like my hairline. Great, now you've scanned your images and you're ready for the fun to begin. Theoretically, you should have three of the same images that all look slightly different. It's really up to you to keep track of which one's red, green, and infrared. But here's a helpful hint in case you lost track. The infrared one generally has the least amount of information and the green one generally has the most. And finally, I'd recommend using negative lab pro to invert your images. I always use the linear flat profile on these and I get good results. So let's start by labeling the red filtered image red, the green filtered image green, and the infrared image blue. Sorry, there's no infrared color label in Lightroom. But then again, we humans wouldn't be able to see it anyway. So maybe it is there. With the red selected, let's go edit in Photoshop. I usually make a copy and edit off that. I labeled that copy in Lightroom as yellow so we know for later that that's gonna be our combined image. Yeah, here we are in Photoshop, which sucks taint, but it's all we got for now. Let's label this layer as green. Yes, I know. It's a little confusing, but the way Aircrumb works is that the green channel is sourced from the red channel. Back in Lightroom, let's right click on the green image and edit in Photoshop. I do edit original because we aren't actually making any changes to this image, just sourcing it. Plus it keeps Lightroom a little less cluttered. In Photoshop, control A and control C copy, flip over to our main comp and control V paste. Label this layer blue. Aircrumb's blue channel is sourced from green. Lastly, in Lightroom, right click the infrared image and edit in Photoshop. Okay, control A and control C copy to our main comp. Label this layer red. You can close the other two comps to keep your workspace a little bit tidy. With all three layers selected, let's go to edit auto align images. I typically always use perspective for these shots. It seems to work the best. Photoshop's auto align isn't perfect, but neither are you, despite what your grandma says. Now we need to assign each layer to an RGB channel. With the red layer selected, add a new channel mixer adjustment layer and zero out the green and blue channels and merge together. With blue selected, add new channel mixer and zero out the red and the green and merge. With green selected, add new channel mixer and zero out the red and the blue and then merge. You can create an action or presets for this and it'll go much, much faster. Now, this is the fun part. Select your two top layers and change the composite mode to screen and now you're in the ballpark. How exciting. This is everything you've dreamed of. Everything you've chugged Flaming Hot Mountain Dew for. Everything that you've spent thousands of ass hours on the toilet for. Well, like SEAL Team 6, now it's time to move in for the kill and wrap this thing up. Photoshop alignment isn't always gonna nail it for you so I'd recommend zooming in on your subject, figuring out which layers are slightly out of alignment and then just drag them closer together. Once you're done, hit file subah and kick flip your ass back to Lightroom. On your comp image, which is hopefully still linked to Photoshop, I typically start by adjusting the white balance. I usually set the warmth to 15 and the purple green tint to about 45 to begin with. And there you can crop your image down to cut out those borders. And if you wanna deal with that pesky vignette, I recommend AI generative fill. Sure, it's cheating, but who will know? Here's a pro tip for ya. If you still have some parallaxive effect left over because you forgot about the distance rule, not the prom distance rule, but the 15 foot rule that I mentioned earlier in this video, then you can try working the de-fringe settings here. Sometimes it helps a lot and sometimes it destroys something that could have been beautiful. Like when I asked that girl to prom and she, you know what, nevermind. Instead of going to that deep dark place, let's talk about the sponsor of today's episode, Squarespace. What are you gonna do with all your sick infrared air chrome shots when they're all done? Show them off, throw them in the portfolio. What better way for everyone to have access to your portfolio than through a website with Squarespace? I use Squarespace to host my own photography portfolio because getting it set up was easier than pie thanks to their custom building modules and simple drag and drop nodes. I was able to arrange images next to one another to sample my portfolio layout all out of mouse clicks notice, which made it easy to establish what orders of images worked and what did not. Start with one of hundreds of professionally designed templates you can choose from and furnish your new site with Squarespace's intuitive user interface that allows you to build portfolios, blogs, and even web shops. And if you run into any snacks during the process, you can check out Squarespace's award-winning 24 seven customer support to get you back on track in no time. So what are you waiting for? If you're ready to build a website, you can start a free trial today at squarespace.com slash grainy days. If you use the code grainy days at checkout, you can get 10% off your first purchase. Anyway, that's about it. This technique works quite well and I'm gonna be using it going forward, especially because now I have two Rideau Aerochrome builds to work with. I've actually already shot some honey dipped portfolio worthy crispy chicken tender slammers with this technique out in the wild, but I'll have to save all that for another time. For now, I guess the real question is, does this mean that I can stop chugging, flaming hot Mountain Dew and live out the rest of my days with a quiet, peaceful, dignified existence? No bitch, my work is not yet done. There's still more to come.