A forum comment told me to ditch my stock IR filter and build my own. Best decision I made this month.

Someone pointed out my night footage looked like a muddy mess because of the factory filter. Swapped it for a custom 850nm filter I cut from a sheet, and now I can read license plates at 30 feet in pitch black. Has anyone else messed with swapping filters on cheap PTZ cams?

3 comments

3 Comments

lily_torres319d ago

Wait, what kind of sheet did you cut the 850nm filter from? I've been thinking about doing this mod on my cheap Reolink cam but I'm worried about getting the glass thickness right and messing up the focus. Did you have to recalibrate the autofocus after you swapped it, or did it just work?

bennett.harper9d agoMost Upvoted

Honestly I'd just buy a proper IR filter instead of cutting one yourself. The thickness mismatch is almost always gonna mess with your focus, especially on cheap cams that don't let you adjust it. Not worth the hassle imo.

emeryj669d ago

Wait did you try sanding down the filter a bit? I did this exact swap on an old Hikvision dome last year and yeah bennett.harper is right that the thickness can be a problem but I found a workaround. I got a sheet of 850nm filter glass off Amazon that was like 1.1mm thick and my stock IR cut filter was 0.9mm so I carefully sanded the edges down with 2000 grit sandpaper until it fit flush. The autofocus on my cam was manual so I just popped the lens out a couple millimeters with a tiny shim of electrical tape and it focused perfectly at night. That Reolink probably has a fixed focus so you might just need to re-glue the lens holder if it's soft focused don't mess with autofocus calibration that's overkill for a cheap cam.