[Medex]

I am joking: seven died, two survived This is the second survivor - K200D, 10.2 Mpix. Finaly acceptable modification.
Some time ago AstroDave started this theme and I become interested to try monochrome conversion.
For those who will decide to go this way - choose K100D 6Mpix, because it has absolutely scratch proof sensor. First picture is shot with this camera and FA31 Ltd.
Two others - from K200D.
For best quality watch pictures on flickr

[Martin Stu]

good pictures

choose K100D 6Mpix, because it has absolutely scratch proof sensor

by any chance you didn't have a Pentax k100d super? I have the opportunity to purchase it not expensively... but I have not decided yet

[ChristianRock]

Those results are fantastic. How do you do this conversion? Is it easy to do? I might want to do it to my K10D since it has some electronic issues already that don't make it worth selling, and I have a K200D as well that I like better anyway.
I would say the K10D is pretty scratch proof, I have had great results cleaning its sensor with those glass-cleaning wet wipes after I identified some gunk on it that wouldn't come off (don't try this at home kids! I only did it because, as I said, the camera's not worth anything due to intermittent issues with the body buttons).

If there's an article or thread with instructions, would you be able to link to it?

[AstroDave]

I would say the K10D is pretty scratch proof, I have had great results cleaning its sensor with those glass-cleaning wet wipes after I identified some gunk on it that wouldn't come off

Unfortunately (?), you are not all that close to the sensor! You are only cleaning the top piece of cover glass (unless you have gone deep inside the camera - not just cleaning from the front with the lens off).

[ChristianRock]

Unfortunately (?), you are not all that close to the sensor! You are only cleaning the top piece of cover glass (unless you have gone deep inside the camera - not just cleaning from the front with the lens off).

Ah thank you. You are right, I forgot about the glass.

[Medex]

good pictures

by any chance you didn't have a Pentax k100d super? I have the opportunity to purchase it not expensively... but I have not decided yet

I have K100D converted to monochrome (first picture in my post). The only problem is vertical 4 pixel wide line near the center of the image that should be removed (content-aware) in PS.

---------- Post added 04-22-21 at 07:02 PM ----------

Those results are fantastic. How do you do this conversion? Is it easy to do?

If there's an article or thread with instructions, would you be able to link to it?

Thank you.
The job is really hard. I messed 7 sensors from K-x (x3), K200D (x2), istD (x1) and K-30 (x1). It is very hard to safely remove sensor protecting glass because it is glued with very strong adhesive. I teared down that glass mechanically. K-30 sensor is very inconvenient for that because it has quite long gold wires inside that were broken by glass peaces.
And second most difficult task is to remove bayer filter array. The more pixels sensor has the more sensitive to scratches it is.
There should be some safe method (maybe chemical), but I don't know about it.

[biz-engineer]

For those who will decide to go this way - choose K100D 6Mpix, because it has absolutely scratch proof sensor. First picture is shot with this camera and FA31 Ltd.

Great images posted.

The job is really hard.

I can imagine, I myself looked at doing it on my K1 , but when I saw online what others had done on their sensors, I decided not to venture into this. I hoped that Ricoh would release a limited monochrome edition, with adapted firmware, and fitted with sensors for which the CFA manufacturing step was skipped at the factory and before camera assembly. K1 special monochrome edition with leather strap (or without), I'll order it without hesitation.

[ChristianRock]

I have K100D converted to monochrome (first picture in my post). The only problem is vertical 4 pixel wide line near the center of the image that should be removed (content-aware) in PS.

---------- Post added 04-22-21 at 07:02 PM ----------



Thank you.
The job is really hard. I messed 7 sensors from K-x (x3), K200D (x2), istD (x1) and K-30 (x1). It is very hard to safely remove sensor protecting glass because it is glued with very strong adhesive. I teared down that glass mechanically. K-30 sensor is very inconvenient for that because it has quite long gold wires inside that were broken by glass peaces.
And second most difficult task is to remove bayer filter array. The more pixels sensor has the more sensitive to scratches it is.
There should be some safe method (maybe chemical), but I don't know about it.

Ok, maybe I won't try this

Congratulations though... I know you went through a lot of cameras but you got it working. It looks great. I wish it were easy to do this.

[barondla]

I am joking: seven died, two survived This is the second survivor - K200D, 10.2 Mpix. Finaly acceptable modification.
Some time ago AstroDave started this theme and I become interested to try monochrome conversion.
For those who will decide to go this way - choose K100D 6Mpix, because it has absolutely scratch proof sensor. First picture is shot with this camera and FA31 Ltd.
Two others - from K200D.
For best quality watch pictures on flickr

Impressive image quality. So is this a lot harder to to vs removing ir glass?

Thanks,
barondla

[Medex]

Impressive image quality. So is this a lot harder to to vs removing ir glass?

Thanks,
barondla

Thank you. Image quality is good, I was impressed from those 6 and 10 Mpix images, especially using new glass like DFA 50/1.4. But FA 31/1.8 is also very nice on these converted cameras.
Monochrome conversion is much harder to do compared to IR conversion. There is very big chance to mess the sensor in the first - protecting glass removal step (it is not the same glass [anti-aliasing filter] that covers the sensor).

[Medex]

more pictures here. This one was shot using FA* 85/1.4 at f2.8


This one is shot with FA* 85/1.4 at f1.4 and postprocessed as normal color image in LR. As you can see, there are some non clean places, that can be enhanced using color sliders


This one is shot with DFA* 50/1.4 at f1.4 and postprocessed differently - "clean" variant is converted in Monochrome2DNG converter to avoid demosaicing in LR (Camera RAW), the second - as ordinary color picture. It looks to me more film-like.



---------- Post added 04-26-21 at 06:18 PM ----------

Great images posted.

I hoped that Ricoh would release a limited monochrome edition, with adapted firmware, and fitted with sensors for which the CFA manufacturing step was skipped at the factory and before camera assembly.

It is hard to believe that Ricoh would make this. The cost of that camera would be very high. The cheaper variant is to buy FF sony or nikon and convert it by MaxMax or similar service. Pitty that MaxMax do not convert Pentax cameras due to "too much wires" inside

[noblepa]

I'm curious. Just how is this conversion done?

When Leica released their monochrome RF camera years ago, they did it by eliminating the red, green and blue micro filters over the sensor. This allowed them to treat each photo-site as one pixel, rather than treating every three photo-sites as one pixel. This, effectively tripled the resolution of the lens.

I believe that it required significant change to the firmware of the camera, to eliminated the combining of the three (RGB) photo-sites into a single pixel.

[Medex]

I'm curious. Just how is this conversion done?

When Leica released their monochrome RF camera years ago, they did it by eliminating the red, green and blue micro filters over the sensor. This allowed them to treat each photo-site as one pixel, rather than treating every three photo-sites as one pixel. This, effectively tripled the resolution of the lens.

I believe that it required significant change to the firmware of the camera, to eliminated the combining of the three (RGB) photo-sites into a single pixel.

I removed sensor protecting glass to access the surface. Then I scratched layer of microlenses and leyer of Bayer CFA. These steps are very difficult to do safely to not destroy sensor circuitry.
IMO there is not such thing like combination of 3 or 4 photosites into 1 pixel. All photosites are individual pixels, just they react to red, blue and green (x2) light depending on color filter.
After the Bayer CFA is removed, all photosites register luminance only and the result is picture in gray tones. In order to achieve better sharpness the RAW file should skip demosaicing process in RAW converter that is always used for color pictures. But RAW converter do not know that you removed Bayer CFA and interprets BW picture from converted camera as color one. So the RAW file should be converted using special software like Monochtome2DNG converter. After that the new DNG file can be processed in every software as true BW picture.

[Andrea K]

Interesting!

[bwgv001]

Wonderful pictures, congratulations to the obviously successful conversion.