Infra Red

A while a go I bought a couple of rolls of Ilford SFX200 . This is not true Infra Red film, but has 'extended red sensitivity'. Recently I got a chance to try the film out. The results are, at best, 'mixed'! I loaded it up in my Nikon F801and put a 25A red filter on the front of the zoom lens it has. The F801 has auto focus which is a good thing as its pretty much impossible to manually focus with the red filter on. All the pictures were of vegetation (trees grass etc) and water (lakes, canals) and I was hoping for some dramatic light coloured vegetation and dark sky. I was pretty disappointed!
Only the photos taken in full sunshine showed any signs of the IR effects I was hoping for. Here a couple of the best ones:

This photo of a tree is one of the few where the green of the tree shows up as a lighter colour

Although its not obvious on these small versions of the photos, the film is pretty grainy. I developed it in Ilford DD-X which is the recommended developer.

Sky turned out quite well on this one but hardly dramatic!

The Ilford data sheet for the film suggests getting the right exposure might be difficult, so I followed the advice and bracketed shots at -1, -2  stops but these were too dark and the F801 meter got the exposure correct. It also says that for the most dramatic effects use a R72 filter.

So, conclusions?
1) You don't get much of a dramatic effect with a 25A filter.
2) You don't hardly any effect unless the sun is out.

Next?
I will probably get hold of a R72 filter. This is a very dark red filter, which will take about 4 stops off the exposure so I will need a tripod. I will load the next roll in my Nikon F, this of course is manual focusing so I will need to take the filter off to frame and focus the photo. Then wait for a sunny weekend!