I ordered Baader IRB Filter from Teleskop-Service company in Germany. It has arrived in 5 days (sent on Friday, arrived on Wednesday - it is quite fast for Germany to Slovakia shipment).

Immediatelly after filter arrival I was eager to see its effect. I tested the performance of webcam at prime focus of my 80mm achromatic refractor with and without Baader IRB filter. I took photos of my photograph from holiday (yes, it's me with my wife :-)). The room was lighted by 3x60W incadescent light (in the night). Incadescent light contains rich infrared component. Exposures taken without IRB had to be shorter than with IRB, because IR light component caused overexposure.

I took four 39 frames AVIs (each represents separate column in the table). The AVIs were analysed and processed by K3CCDTools.

Here are the results:

	With IRB Indoor White Balance Manual exposure setting	With IRB Auto White Balance Auto exposure setting	Without IRB Indoor White Balance Manual exposure setting	Without IRB Auto White Balance Auto exposure setting
Histogram of stacked image
39 frames stacked
39 frames stacked + Auto Range Histogram
39 frames stacked + Auto Range Histogram + Auto Color Balance
39 frames stacked + Histogram stretch + gamma 1.20

Conclusion

As it is shown in histogram graphs, Baader IRB offers much higher contrast than CCD camera without it. About color tone fidelity we needn't to talk - it is visible on the first look. Even histogram manipulation couldn't enhance the quality of photos without IRB to comparable level to photos taken with IRB.

All I can say - Baader IRB filter showed very nice performance and is worth of every Euro spent for it.

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Last Update: 20.02.2003