Tavel

Does anyone use IR cut window clings? I'm looking to do up my western exposure windows because the temperature in my apartment shoots up 10 degrees when the sun comes around...maybe 5-6 degrees if the blinds are closed.

I know it's going to chew apart my wallet when the A/C has to fight the sun in the summer.

So I did some preliminary research and wanted to get your thoughts. Good brands, good places to get it, maybe even DIY alternatives (plexiglass) etc. I definitely want a film that's transparent to visible light. I don't want a darkening filter because I don't need to "see it in action" like some people. "How could it be blocking light if it's clear?!?"


I wish I had a far infrared camera to test this stuff with. I just have a Near IR camera...it doesn't see "heat" but it's still fun.



Near IR with a 720nm cut filter. Water reflects IR better than visible light, that's why the reflections are so vivid.

On another note...did you know humans can SEE infrared? I made an apparatus out of that 720nm cut filter and went for a stroll. It was pretty awesome. Everything looked red...but not quite right. The sky was black and the grass was white. people's skin was pasty white, their eyes were black, and all their veins were visible.

DSwofford

how did you make that? sounds cool!

KyWildFish

Infrared light is just another type of wave that is given off of objects. You probably know it more as "heat." There are devices like the camera used that translate the heat (IR) waves into the visible spectrum so we can see them. Its kind of like translating binary into english. There are huge spectrums of waves and we are only privaliged to be able to see a small amount of them with our eyes. Our minds can create devices that can translate almost all waves into some visual medium, like this cool picture above.

The more you know.

Tavel

does anybody have an estimate for the cost of operating a window A/C? I've run the numbers and it will take:

1 year to pay off if it costs $50 a month to operate the A/C.
2 years if it costs $25 to operate, and so on.

(I estimated it by figuring that the blinds block about 50% of the heat by themselves. So the film would block 38% of the heat, then the blinds would block 50% of the remaining 62%...so 31% would actually get through. Following from that, the films cuts energy costs by about 40%. The film costs $75, so it could take a while to pay off if the actual cost of operation is very low...)

Yup, all EMF radiation is light and behaves the same way. Radio waves actually behave like red light, just on a different scale. People are transparent to radio waves just like glass is transparent to red light.

There are actually two flavors of infrared light, "far" infrared and "near" infrared. Far infrared is radiant heat, that's the kind of light thermal cameras pick up.

Near infrared (as I captured in the photo) isn't as exotic. It behaves almost exactly like visible red light, but reflects differently. we can even see it under the right conditions.

It's still very interesting to see the different reflectivity, it's almost like looking into another dimension.

One more thing, the colors are false...they're an artifact of the camera's color filter and internal processing (just like how we perceive different colors by the arbitrary sensitives of the cones in our eyes. the 7 colors of the rainbow do not actually exist...trippy right?)

Black and white images are more representative of what the world actually looks like...especially true for non-visible spectrum images.

some more examples for you're viewing pleasure...


My girlfriend looking for frogs. Her shirt is actually black, and her hair is really dark brown (not blonde, as it appears).


A $20 bill has a white strip across the back when viewed in near infrared.


Another landscape

All three of the above images were taken with my IR-modified Fujifilm A340. Open it up and replace the IR-cut filter with an IR-pass filter...exposed film works well. 10 minutes and you have a permanent infrared camera!