Infrared test.
The Olympus E-500 is a digital SLR.
Shooting in JPEG or TIFF, its IR sensitivity seems to be quite low compared to many other cameras, SLRs and fixed-lens. However this is misleading.
Above is the raw camera output. Exposure was 1/15 second at f5.6.
A straight greyscale conversion and some levels work gives the image above.
The above is a grayscale conversion made from the red channel alone.
Shooting in RAW mode and dialing in two stops of exposure compensation at shooting time results in the following results, which are much more impressive, showing the problem is more with the exposure metering than with the image sensor.
The RAW image. Exposure was 1/2 second at f3.5
The RED channel data
The GREEN channel data
The BLUE channel data.
You can see that performance is much better and I would now say this camera is quite useable as an IR camera. Noise levels are good.
The following are 100% sections from each channel:
Red
Green
Blue