I used and loved infrared film from the beginning of my photographic career dating from 1968. I particularly liked color infrared because of its surreal color relationships, and I even cross processed it for ultra wild imagery. The color infrared we have available today is not the same at all. The images that come out of the camera have to be tweaked in post-processing to elicit colors that make sense, such as the blue skies and magenta vegetation you can see in the two pictures here that I took in the Rhine River Valley in Germany.
You have to devote a camera just to do this technique. When you do this, you have a choice between color infrared or black and white infrared. However, if you choose color the images can always be rendered black and white. At the low end of conversions, you can buy the camera and have it converted for about $300.
Digital infrared doesn't look exactly like the original infrared film, but you can definitely produce some compelling images. I do find that infrared images are slightly less sharp than normal pictures, and I therefore apply sharpening to each shot to give it the crisp clarity I like.
