Guide: How to remove AA and IR Filter from your NX10

I finally decided to remote AA and IR filter from my NX10 (so in case I screw up I can justify a NX20...). Well, I didn't. And in case somebody else want's to try it, I prepared a little tutorial.

Step 1: remove all visible screws to get rid of the back side of the camera. Attention: one screw sits under the rubber for the thump, another is located in the battery slot.

After that the back side will come off and we will see the AMOLED.

Step 2: Remove the 2 screws holding the AMOLED. You can't access the one in the left down corner, you have lift and rotate it:

Now comes the hardest part, Step 3: we need to remove the main board. Therefore we have to remove all data cables and some screws. Careful here, very fiddly - it even worse putting them back in...

Now - the contacts to the battery will need some space to lift the mainboard out. It helps if you - gently - lift up the top plate of the camera.

If you've done that you will see the next board:

Now it get's easier. You see 7 screws. The 4 silver hold the sensor and the filters. The 3 black are for sensor alignment. Remove them all, then you can turn the board aside.

In my experience the AA filter does some IR-filtering to. Both are only glued - you need a little knife to remove them.

There we have it. You can know isolate the filters from the sensor. Keep the sensor somewhere clean. It now depends on what you want: the AA filter should be the bright one in front connected with the power cable for dust shaking. Under that one is the blue IR-Filter.

In my case - I removed both and then put everything back together. There seems to be 3 drawbacks so far:

• I have no dust removal since there is no more AA filter left

• the sensor is completely unprotected

• the optical path must have changed someway, because when I got everything back together it wouldn't focus until infinity. I needed to open it again and tighten the alignment screws a lot more then they were in the first place. Perhaps it would be better to replace the IR filter with something else of the same thickness.

After that - it works fine. No autofocus problems with any of my lenses.

you can focus without any filter if you screw the sensor to the tightest point, thats my finding on the nx100. Something else to keep in mind that glass replacement would not just work in the same manor if its the same physical thickness.

I did some tests regarding the IR cut strength of the 2 filters here. Also i made a glass replacement filter. It cost a stop of light so i have since removed it. looking back the glass was easier to clean than the naked sensor .
http://paulrshome.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/nx100-internal-filters-analysed.html

An interesting project, although I wouldn't dare try this on mine. Any pictures taken WITH the camera?

one thing you may find using full spectrum is focus problems (not AF problems) as IR light focuses at a different point to normal light. It can leave images a bit blurry, if you buy a ir/uv cut filter you can still use it for normal light shooting. Insects are slightly different as the dont really radiate IR light so full spectrum can keep them quite sharp.

Very interesting, especially with the current prices of those old NX bodies.