Nikon D3200 IR Conversion - mitxela.com

Nikon D3200 IR Conversion<br>11 Mar 2019<br>Progress: Complete

Story

In front of the sensor in a DSLR camera is an IR-Cut filter, which blocks infrared light from hitting the sensor. Most of the time you don't want it, but if you're trying to do infrared photography, that filter has to be removed. Some people call this a "full spectrum" modification, although a bare sensor is hardly full-spectrum. You'd think this is the best solution, because you can stick IR filters on the front of lenses if you want to block visible light, but the fact is it's incredibly inconvenient to do that. For one, you need a different filter for each size of lens you have, but more importantly, if you're blocking infrared light from entering the lens, the viewfinder is no longer usable. That basically defeats the point of an SLR.

So the best thing to do for digital infrared photography is to replace the IR-Cut filter with an IR-Pass filter. I have done this in the past: when I upgraded from a D80 to a D7100 I turned the old D80 into an IR camera. That was such a relatively simple task that I didn't write up anything about it. Disassembling the D80 to get to the sensor took maybe 20 minutes. Unfortunately the reason I had upgraded to a new camera is that the D80 was reaching the end of its life, the shutter mechanism kept jamming, and despite a perfect modification I only got a few days of use out of it before the shutter gave up entirely.

I made a note to buy a second-hand camera, something good but old, that I could sacrifice into a new IR camera. As fate would have it, someone gave me a "spare" Nikon D3200. This is an entry-level DSLR, which had been bought and basically never used. It doesn't support autofocus for older lenses (which makes up most of my collection) but autofocus isn't important (or specifically, never works) for infrared. However it is new enough to have Live-view, which should be a godsend to infrared photography. Getting things in focus is always the challenge when shooting infrared, which normally involves looking at the marks on the lens and doing a lot of guessing. With Live-view we can see the actual infrared light as it appears at the sensor, and even its contrast-detect focusing should work without needing to be calibrated.

Anyway the reason I'm writing this is that I strongly recommend nobody does this to a D3200. I was taken aback by the insides of it. Compared to all the other (read: more expensive) DSLRs I've taken apart, the D3200 is most definitely not repair-friendly. To get to the sensor requires peeling off the rubber, undoing stickers, desoldering wires and pulling the front and top off the camera just to be able to unscrew the sensor mount. During re-assembly I figured it might be worth documenting this to prevent others from facing the same troubles.

Steps

Remove the two screws inside the battery compartment. One of them retains the red plastic that holds the rubber grip in place.

Peel off the rubber grip. Start by levering it up in one corner on the side of the camera. It is held in place with double-sided tape, but also there are tabs in some places, which could get damaged if you yank too hard.

Also remove the small triangle of grip material on the back.

Remove the six screws on the base of the camera.

Remove the two screws under the port cover.

Remove the two screws that were revealed under the edge of the rubber grip.

Slide off the rubber eyepiece, carefully lift off the sticker on the diopter adjustment dial. Remove the four screws around the viewfinder and the screw that was under the grip triangle.

It should now be possible to lift off the back of the camera. The display and controls are connected with a large board-to-FPC connector which is disconnected by simply lifting it.

Undo all of the remaining FPC connectors, which are all of the type with a locking hinge that needs to be lifted. Pull out the battery connector on the right. Desolder the four wires at the top left. There are four screws that hold this main board in place – remove them.

Notice that the wire colours are nicely labelled Bl, W, Bk, R. This picture is of course after I re-attached the wires during reassembly.

There is one more screw to remove before the main board should be removable, inside of the ports area.

It should now be possible to remove the main board, along with the plastic part that surrounds the ports.

Now for the front cover. Remove the two black screws above the lens mount. The screws on the mount itself do not need to be removed.

Where the grip was removed, there are two more screws to take out. The third screw is partially covered, and does not need to be removed.

There are a few screws in the frame that need to be taken out before the front will come off. In the photo below I'm using a pair of tweezers and a rubber band ("improv locking tweezers") to lift up one of the flexible boards to show two of the screws that need to come out. The...