Nikon D70 Infrared Conversion Tutorial

I have been converting Nikon Coolpix series cameras to infrared for some time now with good results. There are some advantages and disadvantages of using a point & shoot camera for IR. The biggest advantage of a P&S IR for me was the small size and the fact that the camera was integrated with a lens. Of course this is also a draw back as you can't interchange lenses for various situations and creative control. Also, the sensor size is much smaller than a digital slr body and therefore the images end up being much noisier.

Finally the price of DSLR bodies dropped enough for me to venture out and start playing with DSLR IR. I chose the D70 mainly because of price but would like to make it known that I currently shoot with D70 bodies be it IR or otherwise.

For those that are new to digital infrared photography allow me to explain some basic principles. Most if not all digital cameras be it SLR or point & shoot have an image sensor that is sensitive to infrared light as well as visible light. In order not to spoil the image with infrared light manufacturers place a IR blocking (hot mirror) filter in front of the image sensor. This makes for some long exposure times (seconds) if one were to take infrared pictures. The only way around this is to remove the IR blocking filter and take advantage of the true sensitivity of the sensor. Ok, so lets jump right in:

Disclaimer: The outlined procedure will void your waranty and you may end up screwing up your camera permanently by following these instructions. Continue at your own risk.

Remove all circled screws. Some of them are longer than others, remember which goes were. Take off the base plate.
Disconect the flat cable as shown in the above photos. The arrow show the locking arm that needs to be raised in order to free the cable. This is a jumper cable that goes to the rear display/control panel.
Removed the circled screws from each side of the camera. They are all the same size but have a different thread than the screws from the bottom plate.
Gently remove the rear display/control panel.
Unscrew the circled screws. The sensor is on the other side of this board.
Before lifting out the sensor board you will need to disconect the above marked cables. The cable with the blue arrow is just a basic cable without any locking mechanisms. The cable with the red arrow is just like the one from the base plate, it has the locking arm that needs to be raised in order to release the cable.

You've made it to the sensor, half the battle is won!
Remove the four circled screws that hold in place the two filter retainers.

The above picture shows the filter retaining clips removed, top left is the replacement visible light block/IR pass filter and right bellow it is the original hot mirror filter.
Replace the hot mirror filter with the opaque IR pass filter, then screw back on the two filter retainers.
Now reassemble everything working backwords.

Congratulations! If everything went well you now have an IR camera!



REPLACEMENT FILTER INFO:


You can purchase the replacement filter used in this turorial at Edmond Optics.
This is a plastic filter of the proper thickness, it will save you much headache over glass as cutting is much simplified. All you need to do to cut it to size is score with a exacto knife and breack at score.
The proper dimensions: 0.995x1.165 inches.