I've been very pleased with the D40's performance over the past few months that I've owned it. The 30-sec captures of 47Tuc, Eta Carinae, etc I've done a while ago convinced me that it has potential as the CCD is certainly very sensitive and the noise characteristics are very good too - somewhat better than some older Nikon varieties like the D50/70 I've seen in the (near) past. "Mode 3" on the D40 (turn power off before the noise algorithms are applied) works well to produce a pretty-much proper RAW file - a nuisance but it works. IR filtering is pretty aggressive though - like recent DSLR's from most manufacturers. Ha stuff such as B33 Horsehead is a killer.
I've just come across a company in the USA called MaxMax that can do an IR+Visible mod on a D40 for US$450 plus shipping. That sounds pretty good to me as I can still use it for visible light work with a CC1 filter attached.
Has anyone used these guys before? I'm really tempted, and once the camera arrives at their place they turn it around in 1-2 days. Also - as a more general question, how do these mods leave the basic functionality of a camera for daily terrestrial use?
http://www.maxmax.com/nikon_d40.htm
Here's another place too: LifePixel -
http://www.lifepixel.com/shop/cart.p...ct_detail&p=49 and they do it for US$350.00 for a IR+Visible mod.