Would you like to use your old film SLR as digital?

[theraven]

There seems to be a solutions abrewing!

<Deleted per forum guideline on crowd funding>

 

[Designer]

Very interesting! Thank you!

 

[Gavjenks]

OP, can you please just verbally describe the idea generically, without linking to the funding, or whatever violates the guideline? Sounds interesting to discuss in general.

 

[usayit]

OP, can you please just verbally describe the idea generically, without linking to the funding, or whatever violates the guideline? Sounds interesting to discuss in general.

http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/...82-interesting-read-those-remember-efilm.html

 

[Prometej]

I'd be very happy to have IR light for helping autofocus. Canon EOS 50 had this helpful thing. With it I can catch the focus at EVERY surface which I want (even at gray wall with low contrast in the night)!

In other cases my DSLR gives me all I need.

 

[Gavjenks]

Thanks usayit.

So basically, a digital sensor sitting on a piece of plastic or whatever, that wirelessly or USB or internally stores images, and can just be slotted into any film camera with a dummy film canister to hold it in place.

What would be possibly also very interesting would be a plain flat sensor where the sensing part went all the way out to the edges of the product, with the electronics behind it only, not extending out to the sides.

Then other manufacturers and researchers could combine these together in various ways to play around with affordable concepts for multi-sensor arrays, and cheap medium format digital, etc.

 

[minicoop1985]

I had no idea this had existed. I would love to use my Aires rangefinder or Olympus OM-1n as a digital camera instead of burning through money for processing all the time just to find I need more practice... Now if this comes to fruition, that would be fantastic, and I would be in line to buy one.

 

[nycphotography]

I'm sorry but I really don't see the point of this in 2013.

In 1998 when a Kodak 620? was like $10,000? Yeah all I wanted were digital backs and inserts for my film cameras.

But 15 years later, a dSLR is so much more than just a digital film canister. It has image preview. Histograms. Blown highligt flashers. INTERCHANGEABLE MEMORY CARDS. AUTO ISO. ISO Bracketing. Heck, even CHANGING ISO looks to be a major PITA w/ a canister insert. And remember those cameras that read the ISO off a barcodey type thing on the film canister? How's that supposed to work?

Thanks, but no thanks. I'll take a $300 used 12mp D90 over something that handles like film but isn't... pretty much any day. the only possible use would be for old rangefinders, and guess what... now even those are going not just digital but super hires mega iso digital.

 

[Gavjenks]

I'm sorry but I really don't see the point of this in 2013.

In 1998 when a Kodak 620? was like $10,000? Yeah all I wanted were digital backs and inserts for my film cameras.

But 15 years later, a dSLR is so much more than just a digital film canister. It has image preview. Histograms. Blown highligt flashers. INTERCHANGEABLE MEMORY CARDS. AUTO ISO. ISO Bracketing. Heck, even CHANGING ISO looks to be a major PITA w/ a canister insert. And remember those cameras that read the ISO off a barcodey type thing on the film canister? How's that supposed to work?

Thanks, but no thanks. I'll take a $300 used 12mp D90 over something that handles like film but isn't... pretty much any day. the only possible use would be for old rangefinders, and guess what... now even those are going not just digital but super hires mega iso digital.

Possible solutions to two of these issues off the top of my head:

1) Memory cards: the canister portion of the insert could easily have a card reader SLOT instead of just integrated memory, which would allow it to take cards (you'd have to remove it first though)
2) ISO: you could probably engineer it so that the film rewind lever could be spun to change ISO by just building a potentiometer into the canister portion. Beep at different tones or number of beeps to confirm.



My question is: how much does a sensor alone like this (+ a couple of chips and some plastic) cost compared to manufacturing an entire camera with the same sensor? If it is like 1/5 of the cost, then this could be well worth it. If it's like 1/2 the cost, not so much.

I suspect it is on the lower end of materials costs. Just getting a doped and microprismed sensor alone for crop sizes apparently costs on the order of $25 nowadays, from a little research. Maybe 2-300 for full frame. Obviously the insert would be much more than that. But I'm just saying the rest of the materials in a modern crop camera obviously cost way more than $25, so that's a minority of the materials cost and the final product (even in small runs) might be significantly less costly. And film cameras are basically free.

 

[nycphotography]

I know I know.

All I'm saying is: $300. D90. 12MP.

I miss my old film cameras, really I do. Right up until I take one off the shelf intending to use it. Then as I'm sitting there with the back open remembering how to load the film... reality and common sense come back to me. Whew, just in time.

 

[usayit]

Of course, if efilm ever crossed over to reality today it would be a niche product.

Think about it... Leica with "real" rangefinders still manage to still exist.

Perhaps a film person who wants the option to shoot digital?

 

[gsgary]

Theres alway the Epson RD1 coking the shutter like film, i would love one

 

[bratkinson]

Did I enjoy taking pictures with my Canon AE-1 and EF bodies? Definitely. And the variety of FD lenses I had? Definitely!

Would I trade my Canon 5D mark iii and 4 L lenses for that? ABSOLUTELY NO WAY!

Other than my own preferences above, I think the biggest issue would be any attempt to 'fit' the digital sensor and memory/wireless parts into a variety of cameras. The dimensions between the rolls of film and the exact location of the shutter varied slightly from camera to camera and vendor to vendor. And that's just 35mm. Throw in a dozen other film sizes and cameras that used them, I'm guessing perhaps 300 or more 'different' camera backs would be needed. There's no way some manufacturer is going to risk the expense of making 50 backs for this camera, and 25 for that, but only 10 for these, annd so on. Too much R&D and specialty manufacturing time and not enough sales to justify the investment.

And there's guaranteed to be some joker in the crowd wanting a digital back for his Kodak Brownie from 50 years ago...

 

[Gavjenks]

The dimensions between the rolls of film and the exact location of the shutter varied slightly from camera to camera and vendor to vendor.

That's true, but that's not actually a problem as you make it out to be.

Film is film. Minolta didn't sell its own proprietary film, etc. So wherever the shutter is, and wherever the film spool is in a camera, that's exactly where it SHOULD be for that camera and its own brand of lenses attached to its own mount. The image will come into focus at the correct spot.

If some other brand has a lens further away from the film plane, then that simply means they would have designed their lenses to focus a little bit further away already to have compensated for that.

As long as it aligns with where the film was intended to be (which it does by snapping into the canister slot), it will be where it should be for that camera to receive the focused image.

 

[Gavjenks]

And there's guaranteed to be some joker in the crowd wanting a digital back for his Kodak Brownie from 50 years ago...

Brownies take 120 film, which is one of the two major standard types. If a company were to actually make an insert like this, I imagine they would make a 35mm one and a 120 film one (even if the sensor doesnt take up the whole space of the 120 film, the canister would be that size to physically fit in, etc.

So you probably COULD use it with a brownie, with no aftermarket modifications.


You talk about "film backs" but that's not really the concept here. Film backs are individualized to camera models. The whole point of this idea is that it attaches to the one most standardized part of ANY camera: the film canister slot. Thus, if you have a 35mm and a 120 digital insert, you can use just those two in dozens or hundreds of different models of camera, with no changes or modifications. Including brownies.