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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday November 16 2019, @09:17PM   Printer-friendly
from the built-in-distortion dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The unarguable benefits of digital photography has rendered the analog SLR obsolete for most purposes. This means that a wide selection of cameras and lenses are available on the second hand market for pennies on the dollar, making them ripe targets for hacking. [drtonis] decided to experiment with a quick and easy digital conversion to an old Canon A-1, and it’s got us excited about the possibilities.

It’s a simple hack, but a fun one. The SLR is opened up, and the spring plate for holding the film is removed. A Raspberry Pi camera then has its original lens removed, and is placed inside the film compartment. It’s held in with electrical tape, upon a 3mm shim to space it correctly to work with the original optics.


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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 16 2019, @10:06PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 16 2019, @10:06PM (#921080)

    There's several products that convert film SLRs to digital. One is called electronic film and sits in the film cassette bay with a digital pickup laying across the film bay. These were around 10 years ago.

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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 17 2019, @01:25AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 17 2019, @01:25AM (#921136)

    There were digital backs over 20 years ago, camera manufacturers decided it would be more profitable to sell an entire new camera.

    • (Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday November 17 2019, @03:24AM

      by driverless (4770) on Sunday November 17 2019, @03:24AM (#921166)

      It was really consumers that decided that hacking up an old camera at a significant fraction of the cost of a new digital one to get a frankenstein not-really-digital made a lot less sense than just buying a purpose-built digital in the first place. This was at best a very, very niche product. Now it's just a curiosity.

    • (Score: 2) by Nuke on Sunday November 17 2019, @11:28AM

      by Nuke (3162) on Sunday November 17 2019, @11:28AM (#921233)

      camera manufacturers decided it would be more profitable to sell an entire new camera

      There are massive technical problems with fitting a digital back to a film camera (even assuming the back is interchangeable in the first place) if you want more than an extrememly basic and awkward-to-use camera. Digital backs on cameras designed for film are really confined to medium or large format studio use where there is time for setting things up.

      Manufacturers always were introducing new cameras anyway. Even in film days it was rare for a consumer grade camera to be produced for more than a couple of years (professional cameras lasted longer - the Nikon F3 and Pentax LX both went 20 years). So why not produce digital one when the tech became avaialble?