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Monochrome sensor conversion... seeking advise

Started Nov 7, 2016 | Discussions thread
Rensol Contributing Member • Posts: 808
Sorry to tel you but you will ruin your sensor and here is why
1

Some introduction.

We are designing and making imaging devices for wide range of applications and industries.

Also as a small portion of what we do we do infrared and full spectrum conversion on cameras.

About your goal.

IF you will succeed in removal of micro-lenses your camera will continue to readout image as combination or RGB pixels. RAW file is NOT a direct readout of per pixel information! So all the task is USELESS if you are  not changing camera firmware to record per pixel information.

Every sensor has QE curve of the sensor and spectral parameters (transmission) of Red, Green and Blue lenses. Camera firmware corrects/adjust sensor signal based on sensors QE curve and transmission of R G B pixels as well as transmission overlaps. This is happening BEOFRE information gets into your RAW file.

Say single red pixel in your out of camera file will NEVER correspond to the single red pixel under red colored on-sensor lens.

About removal of lenses:

Forget about mechanical removal. Those youtube videos are useless and they WILL render your sensor inoperable.

We did try chemical dissolution of polymer lenses. To some degree it was ok. Some sensors had lenses from cross-linked polymer. Forget about dissolving of those.

Another method was evaporation of micro-lens array by target focused femtosecond laser. This worked best. However you would need to take into consideration you would need to seal sensor again. In inert gas atmosphere.

In our case with experimental laser evaporation sensor died on 8th day of life after procedure.

Put is this way.

If it is not a kind of sport for you (where results do not matter) them play with it!

If you are result oriented then forget about it.

It would be cheaper to by Leica Monochrome caemra (remember about camera firmware?)

Try and you will see.

P.S.

There was remark about how QE (quantum efficiency) of sensor changes with removing IR Cut filters. QE of a sensor is an inherit property or particular model of photo-detector. Basically said if your single photo-detector is bean stroked by 10 photons and photo-detector converted to 10 corresponding pulses (electrons) then QE=1 Removal of filters from in-front of the sensor will not change properties of the sensor (unless you screwed it up :).

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