DIY Astro-Modding a Canon 6D with Full Shutter Replacement

Wherein I wing it on video for over two hours. And suffer some video/audio failures. The audio isn't great, but I did my best to salvage it. I fell asleep twice trying to watch the whole thing back when checking if there were any rendering errors. Good luck!

While all that is going on I also astro-mod the sensor on a Canon 6D and swap out it's old shutter for a brand new one!

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Astro-modding your camera seems like a great deal: with an simple online tutorial and a little screwdriver you can turn your normal DSLR or mirrorless camera into a Hydrogen-Alpha-imaging-beast! WOO!

Except in all likelihood you're gonna f**k something up and break your camera. Or you're going to do something wrong that you didn't even realize was a potential pitfall and the end result is going to be a camera with one or more... "quirks."

After all, there are those "unknown unknowns."
Maybe you'll end up like me and you'll discharge a flash capacitor into your own self. Or break a micro switch. Or blow an SMD fuse somewhere. Or just physically break something. Or fry the main board. Or scratch the sensor. Or end up with a sensor with an egregious tilt. Or miss that a bunch of dust got trapped between your sensor filters. Or the shutter will jam the first time you turn the camera on and you'll have no idea why. Err 20 wat??

You get the idea.

There's a reason it's so hard to sell a modified camera on AstroMart unless you have a receipt from LifePixel or Spencer's or Kolari to go along with it. Because most people only ever do this once, and thus didn't have experience with what needs to go right and what can go wrong. There are a lot of lessons to learn and a lot of mistakes to make, and I've done 'em all.

Well, all the mistakes I know of!

0:55 - Where I try to warn you away
4:09 - Tools of the trade
11:04 - Receipts
13:10 - Where I get really insistent about screwdrivers
15:00 - More tools. The most tools, really.
22:42 - Anatomy of a CMOS. Sensor. Sensor's filters.
38:48 - Some Sensor Science (experiment) Shenanigans
41:44 - Sensor Anatomy continued
42:51 - Experiment with a polarizer and a 1/4 wave plate
46:10 - Still explaining Sensor filter Anatomy
47:40 - Low Pass Filter Experiments! Neat!
54:52 - Hopefully the last cut to more filter anatomy??
55:19 - Anti-Aliasing explanation demonstration
59:25 - End of sensor anatomy I promise
1:03:24 - FINALLY we start with the camera disassembly
1:29:53 - We're at the senor, but don't touch those screws yet!
1:34:39 - How to properly remove the sensor
1:39:48 - Further disassembly to access shutter
1:41:34 - Shutter removal and replacement
1:48:50 - The part where we start actually modifying the sensor
2:02:30 - The Sensor Returns Home aka Sensor tilt adjustment
2:07:03 - Reassembly FFWD
2:08:47 - Stay out of Live View if you know what's good for ya!
2:11:31 - More warnings and the end!


Some music from Bensound. All images and audio copyright their respective owners.