Panasonic Lumix TZ7

I love digital infrared. Until this year, my best IR camera was a 3.4-megapixel Nikon Coolpix 990 that a good friend converted for me. The “antiquarian” color scheme in which its CCD sensor sees infrared wavelengths is so lovely that I rarely convert the camera’s files to monochrome.

But the camera isn’t exactly compact when worn around one’s neck for hours. I’ve long wanted a higher-resolution– but smaller– IR shooter. But sadly, after the 3-megapixel era, digital cameras really had to be converted if one wanted to shoot tripod-free, hand-held, IR. And this conversion was either expensive when done by someone else, complicated to do oneself, or both. I often trolled YouTube for videos about conversions that I might be able to handle, and this year, I finally found these excellent vids about converting Panasonic’s Lumix DSC-ZS3