Ever since i got my D300 last December, my old Nikon D50 has been burning a hole in my pocket, as they say. A couple weeks back, i finally decided to send it off to be converted to a pure infrared camera. Today it came back, so i took it on a trip thru some of my favorite parks in Berlin. Some 15km and 250+ photos later, here are some initial highlights (with light post-processing in Lightroom 2 only):
From the “Life on Mars” set — see more on dwarfland.com
Nice, it does look like a mars landscape! Was it expensive to get your D50 converted? Do you think it was worth doing?
it cost about ~€300 to get the camera converted (that is with the IR filter; to convert it without (still needs on the lens filter for IR, then, but preserves the option to shoot full color, as well) iirc would have been about €50 less).
was it worth it? of course i’ve just spend a few hours with it so far, but i’m very happy with the results, so far. time will tell how often i’ll end up using it in the long run, as of course it’s now a matter of deciding IR-or-not before leaving the house, or carrying two bodies around your neck (i’ll certainly do the latter, next month in San Francisco ;).
but given the D50 probably would just have collected dust in by drawer here otherwise (i’m not a big believer in ebay, for one, and i usually do like to keep my “firsts” – first PDA, first laptop, first DSLR – for posterity, for another), i’d think it was a good investment and will give it a new lease on life.
One thing though: i’ve been shooting with my D300 only, for the past 5 months now. it’s not been until now, when i spend a day with the D50 again, that i began to fully appreciate the difference in class between the D50 and the D300. The D50 feels like a small toy camera in my hands, now. ;)
Btw, i should mention that http://www.optik-makario.de/ did the conversion, and i’ve been very impressed with their customer service and pre-purchase support. it’s not often that you mail a company top request a quote, and they ask when the can call you back to discuss and explain the available options with you in detail. For anyone considering the conversion in or around Germany, i’d definitely recommend to check with those guys!