October 25 2005 This small article explains through easy steps, how you can convert your old and obsolete into a nifty Infrared see-through cam. No props or accessories other than a screw driver set is necessary. Please understand that this 'operation' might destroy your cam and render it useless. Please do the 'operation' on your own risk.


I took my good old Logitech QuickCam for this experiment. But almost any webcam can be used because all of them have pretty much the same parts. Its three to four years old and has a pretty sloppy sensor that can only produce poor quality images (max 640x480). It is pretty much obsolete and no one practically uses it. Using an old digital camera instead of a sloppy webcam will produce high quality IR images and also, it'll be much more sensitive to IR rays

Step 1

Carefully unscrew the body and tear it apart, eh, I mean open the case.


Here is the QuickCam's inside

Step 2

Remove the circuit board from the case. In this case, everything including the lens was attached to the circuit board

Step 3

Careful remove the tiny case which holds the lens. Here, it is a small plastic cylinder. This holds the lens and the Infrared filter (the thin shiny red lens) . That is what prevents infrared rays from reaching the sensor.

This is the heart of the cam, the sensor. You'll be able to see it once the lens case is removed

Step 4

Now detach the lenses (depends upon your cam's structure), and remove the tiny red glass. (It may sometimes appear as plain glass, but appears red when viewed from a side angle). In this case, the infrared filter was encased between the outer lens and the inner lens. So I had to carefully pull of the inner lens with a safety pin. To do so, I even had to scratch off the sides of the plastic cylinder.

Step 5

This is the infrared filter removed from the lens casing. Now that you have removed the infrared filter, take an ordinary X-Ray sheet a cut a very tiny piece, the same size as that of the filter (a tiny square here). Place the new 'x-ray filter' in place of the infrared filter the same was as it was before, and put the lenses back.

Step 6

Here comes the hard part. Putting everything back :) Here I attached the plastic lens casing to the circuit board, positioned the board properly in the casing and screwed the body back. Thats it ! The IR see-through cam is ready! Click here to see a few pics I took with my modded Infrared cam

This gizmo can easily be converted to a night vision equipment if a few IREDs (Infrared emitting diodes) are added so that they shoot infrared rays onto an object when viewing in the dark.