Canon 300D mod for astrophotography and IR imaging

posted Apr 15th 2006 2:00am by Eliot Phillips
filed under: digital cameras hacks

300d

[Jan-Erik Skata] recently had to perform surgery on his Canon 300D since the secondary mirror would not raise up (and if manually locked wouldn’t autofocus). His repair guide is good; you may remember his focus screen replacement. The thing I found really interesting was the site he referenced for his disassembly: Gary Honis’s Canon Digital Rebel (300D) Modification. Gary removes the IR cut glass from inside the camera and replaces it with a piece of clear glass. He then shows how to setup color correction and confirm that autofocus is still working correctly. He’s even got a mockup for how to add peltier cooling to the CMOS chip.

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Comments [13]

Reader Comments

First post, sorry couldn’t help myself, good guide for any one with a 300d.

Posted at 2:55 pm on Apr 15th, 2006 by Loki

Why would you want to cool the cmos chip? Better picture or somethin?

Posted at 3:31 pm on Apr 15th, 2006 by evo31337

The colder it is, the less noise it creates in the images.

Posted at 4:08 pm on Apr 15th, 2006 by Timbo

Heat adds noise to the image, which appears as spots in the image — if you take a cheap webcam, point it at a dark surface, you’ll notice it. I’ve been wanting to do this to a camera for a while now… I’m so tempted :)

Posted at 7:15 pm on Apr 15th, 2006 by hex4def6

i’ve seen where astonomers actually use liquid nitrogen to cool their ccds to get as clear a picture as possible. we should get those guys to start doing movie rips since they’re so quality concerned

Posted at 9:20 pm on Apr 15th, 2006 by carpespasm

well, it doesn’t pay *not* to be obsessed with quality as an astronomer, no one wants to waste a couple weeks thinking they’ve found an asteroid on collision course with earth and then find out their ccd was too warm.

Posted at 9:32 pm on Apr 15th, 2006 by mc

the peltier cooler idea is just awesome.

Makes me wish it was for the D70 which gets horrible amp glow on anything over a minute exposure.

Posted at 3:59 am on Apr 16th, 2006 by nate mc

Why bother with surface mount fuses on a board thats buried 2 or 3 layers deep in the camera??

The basic idea of a fuse/breaker is to save a more expensive component. In this case if it was 200 EUR for a plastic pin, whatever component that those fuses was protecting would involve replacing an entire board or the labor to remove and reattach a significant chip.

Having one components like this ’saved’ by a fuse really doesn’t matter. Cannon could have saved a bit on each device by not having to install and design in those fuses too.

Posted at 11:04 am on Apr 16th, 2006 by freiheit

Freiheit – if you read the text you will know that the fuse burned because I put the battery in while the camera was not completely assembled.
This was clumsy. But actually I am looking for a scrap BG-E1 vertical grip to paint silver and add a fuse inside.

Posted at 11:28 am on Apr 16th, 2006 by Jan-Erik Skata

“if you read the text you will know that the fuse burned because I put the battery in while the camera was not completely assembled.”

I’m not questioning your specific project. I’m questioning why the *MANUFACTURER* put the fuse there in the first place.

The idea of a fuse is that something goes amok, the fuse blows. Then you un-amok it, replace the fuse, and your widget works again. In this case replacing a fuse soldered to the PCB is as much work/expense as replacing whatever would have blown out.

Posted at 2:21 pm on Apr 16th, 2006 by freiheit

freiheit, it may be just as difficult, but these are not devices intended for consumer repair. besides, which would you rather have to replace, a fuse or the umpteen pixel CCD, or even some part of the lens, where you’d have to disassemble it and then reassemble it and colimate it. It’s like the circuit breakers in your house. You don’t have them because they’re easier than replacing your house, you have them because they’re cheaper than replacing your house.

Posted at 2:37 am on Apr 17th, 2006 by Ben

heheh, well, it also makes the aftermarket repairs easier as well. i remember saving more than one PSX because someone used a junk memory card that blew a fuse protecting the controller ports. just bridge where the fuse was and use good memory cards, good to effin go

Posted at 2:33 pm on Apr 17th, 2006 by carpespasm

erm, thats nothing new. Don’t tell me, someone has worked out how to enable hidden features on the 300D…

Posted at 10:08 pm on Apr 20th, 2006 by tomg