Conversions
Converting your camera to infrared: the honest primer
What a conversion actually does, why the sensor stops seeing what you see, and how to decide whether to send in a body you love.
Part of the infrared photography guide. Equipment links are affiliate links — disclosure.
Every digital camera ships with a hot-mirror filter glued in front of the sensor. Its job is to block near-infrared so your photos look the way your eyes remember the scene. An infrared conversion removes that filter and, in most cases, replaces it with a new one tuned to a specific wavelength — 590nm, 665nm, 720nm, or 850nm. The sensor doesn’t change. What changes is which slice of light it’s finally allowed to record.
The result is not a filter effect you can undo later. It’s a permanent change to the camera. That’s the trade: you dedicate a body to a spectrum you can’t normally see, and in return you can shoot handheld in bright daylight at native ISOs without a stack of dark glass on the front of the lens.
What actually happens inside
- The stock UV/IR blocker is removed from over the sensor.
- A replacement filter with a defined cut-on wavelength is installed in the same spot.
- The autofocus system is recalibrated so it hits focus in the new spectrum.
- Live-view white balance is set against a neutral IR reference (usually grass).
Who should convert, and who shouldn’t
Convert if you have a second body you already trust, or a used body you can dedicate. Do not convert your only camera. And do not convert a body you plan to sell soon — resale value drops sharply because the buyer pool is small.
Choosing what to convert to
The wavelength decision is the one people agonize over. It matters less than they think — any of them will teach you the medium — but it does shape the look. That’s the subject of the next post: 590nm vs 665nm vs 720nm vs 850nm.