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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: 4, Informative) by VLM on Saturday November 16 2019, @11:23PM (5 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 16 2019, @11:23PM (#921109)

    I'm a little confused about the optics, isn't the cam sensor microscopic compared to 35mm film so everything would be like 1000x zoom?

    Now maybe a smaller format like 110 cartridge... I had a 110 film camera in the 80s. It gave very ... cellphone quality ... photos, but did work. And was tiny.

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  • (Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday November 16 2019, @11:43PM

    by Bot (3902) on Saturday November 16 2019, @11:43PM (#921115) Journal

    Yep, the notorious "crop factor" will be huge.

    --
    Account abandoned.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 16 2019, @11:55PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 16 2019, @11:55PM (#921119)

    The crop factor is only around 1.6x
    My old film lenses are just fine with a 1.6x crop

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by ChrisMaple on Sunday November 17 2019, @06:12AM

      by ChrisMaple (6964) on Sunday November 17 2019, @06:12AM (#921199)

      The Raspberry Pi camera sensor is about 3.7 x 2.7 mm. The size of a full frame 35 mm camera image is 36 mm x 24 mm. That's about a 9:1 crop factor. Without going into all the details, it's going to provide poor quality with even the best 35 mm camera lenses ever made.

    • (Score: 2) by Nuke on Sunday November 17 2019, @10:30AM

      by Nuke (3162) on Sunday November 17 2019, @10:30AM (#921223)

      My old film lenses are just fine with a 1.6x crop

      So you have tried this idea have you? Thought not.

      The crop factor of 1.6 is about the factor you get using a 35mm film lens (strictly speaking a lens for the 135 format) with an APS format camera - which most DSLRs are. That is quite often done by people utilising old lenses. As someone else said, the crop factor of a Raspberry Pi sensor in a 135 format camera is huge.

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday November 17 2019, @02:46PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 17 2019, @02:46PM (#921245)

      Interestingly thats the crop factor for my EOS 7D, AC must own Canon products. They're nice, aren't they AC? Other brands are all over the map.

      For fun I was motivated yesterday to look for APS sensor breakout board and such as you'd think camera hackers would want some kind of raspi/arduino breakout of a fine sensor for camera hacking. There's nothing. I suppose that's theoretically a side business opportunity for me, although I donno if I'd sell more than like 3 of them, LOL. You'd think someone would have stuck an APS sensor on a pi-hat breakout for camera hacking, but there's nothing. I own some low res IR sensors on breakout boards (like 8x8 pixels) and its pretty cool. Of course "its cool to F around" might sell at $50 for IR imager but not sell so well at maybe $200 retail for an APS sensor breakout.