Soldering Iron Not Pictured: Or, How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating and DIY an IR Camera
Converting a Canon Rebel t2i to IR
This project has been something I've been wanting to do for close to 15 years now. Most of that time, though, I only had one primary camera and not a whole lot of money to either buy a dedicated IR camera nor to risk DIYing my only "work horse" as it were. My main camera being a Canon Rebel t2i (or otherwise known as the 550D). In late 2020 that changed when I got my Panasonic Lumix GX850. I love both cameras, but the Lumix has had the plus side of a swivel screen and a much smaller form factor that fits in my purse. Since using the Lumix "full time" my t2i has been mostly collecting dust. Waiting for the day for me to overcome the procrastination hump on the DIY IR conversion. Close to 5 years later and it finally happened!
To complete this project I followed a full break-down tutorial (link below). However, there are a couple caveats I must mention. Firstly, there are 2 primary paths to take when doing the conversion. A partial conversion (the one I did) wherein one only removes only the IR filter plate in front of the camera censor. This means that all wavelengths are now hitting your censor instead of just the visible ones. Which means that if you were to take regular photos they'd look a little more pink-ish, but nothing like the typical IR wow-factor. To achieve this one either must do a total conversion by then replacing the IR filter for a visible spectrum filter within the camera OR by adding a filter to the front of the lens on a partial conversion. If you got the dough and you know you're only gonna shoot with 850nm then doing a full conversion is the way to go since you're already nose deep into mangling your poor defenseless camera. However! If you're strapped for dosh like me or you wanna do different wavelengths, say you got an 850nm and a 720nm lens filter, then you can do more different effects by not replacing the filter you just broke. Even though I didn't do so myself, I would highly recommend replacing it with a fully clear piece of glass if you wanna do a partial conversion. Just so things fit back in just right and not jostle around.
Secondly, I want to mention is that, as you'll note below, I have linked a tutorial on setting up a custom white balance profile in Lightroom. The reason one needs a custom profile is that the image will turn out very very red (duh), but Lightroom isn't designed to handle the IR spectrum. Additionally, if going for a false color look, you'll need to futz about with the channel mixing. The channel mixing is easy enough to handle in a program such as the GIMP. I am not, however, sure how to translate the white balance profile in a free software such as Darktable. Perhaps you do. Perhaps it's much more straightforward than corpo drek like Lightroom. As I haven't yet fully swapped my workflow into Linux away from the corpo world I do not have the answers myself. I will update this page when I do have a good workflow with Darktable or another FOSS alternative (Edit: I have discovered a tutorial for using Darktable. Link below). Until then, I hope the corpo solutions help you as they help me for the time being.
And it was then she discovered that Darktable is capable of auto-white-balancing IR out of the box and no tweaks or LUTs or the beating around various bushes were necessary and twas the easiest experience in all the land. Thus once again did FOSS save the day and lo did the corporations did weep in agony. Amen. A test shot of a lake as well as a test portrait of my partner in crime marriage.
To start off this project I needed to collect my tools. The tutorial starts off with a list of necessary tools and lists a bunch of tools including a soldering iron. At not point in the steps, though, do they ever tell you to actually use it. This made me bewildered enough to post to Mastodon about it (not linked as my posts are set to evaporate after a year) and chuckles were had by a few over an "emotional support soldering iron". Foreshadowing! So, I gathered my tools: a cup of coffee, a pen, labeled buckets for screws, a screwdriver set with all the works, a project mat, and a printed out copy of the tutorial page because I'm old. Soldering Iron, not pictured. I cruised along the tutorial fairly quickly. It's actually pretty good, if not lacking in a little bit of depth. The photos are spot on enough to do a full break down. Then right as I get to the last screw to access the censor directly, I see it. A stripped screw. I try a few tricks I picked up like etching out a line for a flathead driver. No avail. It's stuck and everything I tried made the screw worse. Then a thought crept into my brain meats and I knew what I needed to do. Bend the fuck outta it and go from there! Nope. While possible, it made getting the last few screws and pulling the plate holding the filter in much more difficult. So a snipping I went. Technically I could've done just one snip, but my snippers were too big and I had to snip in one spot on the censor itself and then twist it off from where the stripped screw was. I pulled the dust filter off, went to pull the IR filter...and shit. It shattered. Tiny glass dust covered the censor. All I could do at that point was carefully pull the shattered pieces out and knock as much dust out as possible and hope I didn't just destroy the censor. I plugged my soldering iron in and got to very poorly fixing the snip and the twist and pull by the screw. I put it all back together and it turned on and takes images still! Tho, it throws an error if I put the lens into manual focus. Something I might have to fix, but everything turned out just fine in the end. I only have a UV filter for my lenses for now, so that'll have to suffice till I can pick up an 850nm filter for a more "classic" IR experience.
Further Reading:
The Tutorial I Followed For My Rebel t2i
Good Video On IR Post-Processing
A Write Up About Getting The Correct White Balance in Lightroom