Just thought I'd post an update on this in case anyone is looking into this stuff in the future.
I finally got the full spectrum mod done on my A7s. I initially took the camera to a place in Sydney called Sydney Camera Repairs in Ashfield but they screwed me around a bit. They got the replacement clear filter in and had my camera for over a month but didn't get around to doing the mod. Anyway I got the camera back from them, and a refund, and I took it to Camera Clinic in Melbourne. They did a good job and I've been playing with it for a couple of weeks now.
I haven't had a chance to use it for anything astro related yet but here are some notes so far:
- I've only tried one lens with autofocus (FE35mm f2.8, this was the lens that was with it when they did the mod) and autofocus works fine and is accurate.
- On that lens I've got a front of lens hot mirror filter from Kolari and with that I get images which basically look normal - that is, like they did before the mod.
- I wasn't expecting to be able to take shots with no filter at all as I assumed that the lenses wouldn't be able to sharp focus the whole spectrum. However, especially when shooting/converting to black and white, the full spectrum images are excellent.
- I got a couple of
these adapters with slide in filter trays (EF to E and Ai to E) - thanks to Josh for bringing them to my attention!! - They let you put 52mm filters behind any Canon or Nikon lens when using them with a Sony E mount camera. Very useful especially as I only have to get filters in 52mm that will work with many of my lenses. The EF one will be particularly useful when I want to attach the A7s to my scope.
Here are a few images shot with it. The first 2 are full spectrum and the second 2 are with a 760nm IR filter.