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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.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Bot on Saturday November 16 2019, @11:34PM (7 children)
Concerning the lenses you can sure be lucky and pick some vintage optics for pennies on the dollar, but they are usually sold at a price reflecting their quality/rarity, now that people realized that with a cheap adapter mirrorless cams can use most mounts (even video mounts, think the C mount from a discarded security camera) and DSLRs can use the ones with enough flange distance.
I still recommend trying out vintage lenses though, new ones are "too good", good contrast, saturation, no flare. Also some of their defects can be adjusted digitally to taste.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by EvilSS on Saturday November 16 2019, @11:50PM (6 children)
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Sunday November 17 2019, @01:07AM (3 children)
Same with the EF mounts for Canon. I run a number of my old SLR lenses on my current Canon DSLR with no issues.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 17 2019, @01:30AM (1 child)
Yeah...good luck getting some L glass for pennies on the dollar.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 17 2019, @01:43AM
Go fuck yourself.
Bet you're glad RMS got cancled for "paedophillia apologism"
Bet you're even happier he recanted, and is now standing in no-mans land.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Sunday November 17 2019, @03:33AM
EF mount hasn't been around as long as the Nikon one but on the plus side it doesn't require a motor inside the camera to work the lens. Although on a camera with minimal support for recording video, having a non-Canon lens with only manual aperture control seems to come in handy.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Sunday November 17 2019, @10:58AM (1 child)
Same with Pentax. Unlike some of the other SLR makers, Pentax went out of their way to make their DSLRs compatible with their older K-mount film lenses, probably because they did not have the resources (as Canon and Nikon did) to introduce a full range of digital lenses all at once at the time. You can meter and use focus assist with the old lenses and the anti-shake works because it is in the camera, not in the lenses.
Nikon are the next best with supporting their older lenses, and Canon are the worst. Canon pissed off their users anyway back in the film days (late 80's) by changing their lens mounts, and today they go out of their way to make their APS format lenses unmountable on their 135 (or digital "Full-Frame") bodies, denying the user the option of cropping in post-processing.
I might be wrong, but I don't think any of the other 35mm camera makers made any attempt to allow their older lenses to be used on their digital cameras, if they made them at all.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 17 2019, @11:26AM
Leica - your dentist will confirm.