Infrared conversion - DIY or Life Pixel?

I am going on my first photography tour and want to maximize my photography experience. I recently saw IR photography and think it would be awesome at Grand Canyon and other places I am going to. I just upgraded to 5Dm3 and have a 40d and planning on buying coworkers 20d for $150 to convert to IR camera. From reading this forum I learned about Life Pixel and what they offer. One of the things they say:

Focus Warning: Because of the complexity and requirement for specialized precision equipment, advanced training and experience, we do not provide any information regarding focus calibration whatsoever.

So if you get their filter and install yourself you still need worry about the focus and cant you do it dyi?

I never saw that on their site, but yes - IR has a different focal plane and that aspect is important.

You can try to re-calibrate auto focus, but IMHO it would be better to let life pixel convert the camera.

fiddling with where the sensor is in relation to the AF sensors is always going to be a bit of a crapshoot - you may get lucky & come close or you may not. In my case both conversions I've done haven't been too far off that I could be bothered pulling the camera apart again to try & rectify the problem by adding (or removing) shim thickness to the point that mounts the sensor which is the only (relatively) easy way to adjust focus yourself on a camera that doesn't have microadjust feature.

It does help though that most of the IR shots I take are at f/8 & above so focussing errors aren't as obvious as say, something at f/1.2

If I do another conversion in future I'd be likely to do something with microadjust and/or liveview so that if needed I could either make adjustments prior, or while out shooting.

If you're on a phototour & using a tripod regularly you could just get by with a R72 (or similar) filter on your lens, although you will need exposure times about a minute during daylight, and anything that moves in that time may not be the result you want...

I just purchased a tripod last night and it will arrive from China in a week or two. I dont mind using it. I can buy 20D for $150 + $275 for conversion to Full Spectrum @ LP. If I do get a conversion done do I still need to use filters? For full spectrum conversion it would be UV & IR.

dkizzle wrote in post #14173938
IIf I do get a conversion done do I still need to use filters? For full spectrum conversion it would be UV & IR.

No, filters aren't generally required - when they do the conversion, it's basicly removing the stock "all-visable-pass" filter that lets in only a small amount of IR light, and replacing it with an "IR pass" filter that lets in IR light and only lets in a small amount of visable light.

The various conversion types just have differing amounts of visable light coming in ( the more visable light band let in, the more colour you'll get on final image)