Where can I have my camera converted to monochrome ?

Hardware
1

Hi,

Anyone know where in Europe, or even better in France, I could let my “old” Pentax K3 II to have it converted to monochrome?

So far, I only found this US site.

2

There is a user “Medex” on pentaxforums.com that has done a lot of monochrome conversions of Pentax and other cameras. Might be worth creating an account there and asking if they still do so.

I believe they are based out of Lithuania, but from what I’ve seen will ship worldwide.

2 Likes
3

Thanks @cmonson!

I think I saw a video somewhere with him, can’t find it back though.

I just created an account on this forum, I’ll ask Medex as soon as possible, wait’n’see…

4

I finally found the Medex website, with his prices.
Thanks again @cmonson for pointing me to the pentax forums.

It looks like, although you can find multiple how-to videos, there are not no many people proposing to do it.

2 Likes
5

Sorry if you have thought about this already, but have you tried using it as a color camera and then just discarding the colors? The Pentax K3 is a fine camera, especially with the nicer Pentax lenses, and you have plenty of information in the image. I am skeptical that a mono conversion will buy much, maybe a bit of extra light sensitivity, but if the sensor has microlenses and they are removed you also lose a bit, so it is a toss (of course people offering conversions rave about the quality gains, but I don’t find the images exceptional in any sense).

I find that in darktable, demosaicing with LMMSE works especially well for shots that are converted to mono.

6

The key for me is the amount of extra control you have over the final image if you only discard the colour information at the end of the processing pipeline.

2 Likes