Nikon Coolpix A hot mirror removal experience and results

mlp

Member
Joined
Aug 16, 2020
Messages
9
Location
Germany
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Multi Format
I thought some of you might be interested in my experience of removing the hot mirror from my Nikon Coolpix A.

I did the conversion myself based on instructions posted on Life Pixel's website. As highlighted in the article, doing the operation does carry risk of electrocution, so please do so at your own risk! Otherwise, disassembly, removal of the hot mirror, and re-assembly went surprisingly smoothly and I just needed to re-open the camera once as one of the cables had not been properly re-attached.

As far as I understand, since there's no hot mirror in front of the sensor the camera is now capable of sensing the full spectrum. For the images in the above album I used a B+W IR 695 filter, attached to the camera using Nikon's UR-E24 filter holder and lens hood combination accessory.

As far as image processing goes I save RAW and JPEG files, using an in-camera profile for black-and-white. To create false colour results I open RAW files in Photoshop, select green as my white balance point, invert red and blue values for the red and blue channels, respectively, using a channel mixer layer, then finally use the auto levels function.

Anyways, I've been very pleased with the results and am collecting current and future examples in a Flickr album.
 
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