After a lot of work, my Nikon D700 Infrared is ready for action! After several Nikon D70 as well as a Nikon D80, I have now converted a full frame camera to full spectrum for the first time: My old Nikon D700.
It already has a few years under its belt, the rubber pads it has in several places came loose from the substrate. But overall it is still in tip-top condition. Removing the IR cut filter is much more involved than the other models. Many more screws, many more cables. Much more concentration is required.
According to instructions online, you have to desolder cables. But it can be done without. Just make sure that you can support the different layers of the camera somewhere without tearing out cables.
Important: To get a Nikon D700 Infrared, it is not enough to remove the cyan hot mirror. You also have to remove the glass plate to which the internal cleaning mechanism is attached. Because this also blocks out infrared (and also UV) light. However, this is not a problem. Just cut the cable, remove the glass completely, and good. Who needs that anyway.
Finally, a full-frame infrared camera!
As with other cameras, the Nikon D700 Infrared has problems with focusing, since glass layers have been removed (and thus distances are no longer calibrated) and IR has different focal planes anyway.
Fortunately, it has Liveview. That simplifies the whole thing a lot. And so I was able to shoot wonderful 720nm photos with the 50mm AF lens – from aperture 8, even objects further away are always sharp.
With the Aerochrome variant with green and orange filters, it’s a bit more difficult. Here, you need at least aperture 16 to get distant mountains or trees in focus. But thanks to the excellent ISO properties of the Nikon D700, this is no problem either.
I am very happy with the result. The Nikon D700 Infrared produces wonderful IR photos. Below are the post-processing settings in Adobe Photoshop, for those who want to do the same with a Nikon D700.
Nikon 50mm f/1.8 D, green and orange filters (“Aerochrome”):
Profile: Adobe Landscape
Temperature: 3100
Tint: 75
Color Mixer
Greens: -10
Blues: -30
