wow...i had no idea this could be done. I was searching for the old " pseudo digital film" hoax and ended up here. Hats of to you. I have to admire your patience.
Thanks Sonnet, it was a great fun project. Currently working on another where I have fitted a Nex 3N to a custom made back on a Nikon F3. It's working very well but a bit more fine tuning to do on the sensor focus. I might post a video on this one when it is working properly.
I had the Sony A7s modified by ATG to fit onto my Contax AX (made by ATG at that time). Robin & ATG can do this but many people may not be able to do. The major benefits on having the Contax AX (by ATG): * All lenses fit onto this body becomes ATG's AF (the world's first) * Much better low light camera than the Sony A7s II * Mounted the ATG's Contax 210/0.03. Not many have ever seen a F0.03 lenses? * ATG Contax Carl Zeiss T* 200mm@F0.03 Kim X3 (AF night vision for video & still) * ATG ADI TTL wireless radio flash can be used with normal & IR photography and videos.
I used to know a man like you, he modified digital camara's and hang the from kites ( long before drones) and got amazing photo's. You and him are genius and without you the world is dull. Thank you for the vidio
This is Awesome! Not many solutions out there that seem to work as well as this, so it's cool to see that you'd be able to do it yourself. I'll have to save this video in case I get the chance to try this out later, thank you for sharing :)
Your selling yourself short Min. I am a builder / carpenter with no electronic skills. With a few basic tools this is an easy project. All the best. Robin.
Hi robin, is it posible to mount it with a shutter that is broken, just leave it open and just mount the motor. dos the system see the shutter by conecting to the motor i think then you can leave it open and the camera slr has a shutter.
awsome ,Just what i was looking for !!! I find this attempt to rescue an analogous camera very interesting. It would be great if the gadget could adapt to the interior of the camera without altering the original line. It may seem very hipster, but it would be very cool for the sensor just act as a film and to take better advantage of the camera's own options and mechanisms. As well as in the past, having to wait for the reveal to see the result. Thank you for sharing this and I greatly appreciate the humility with which you share this good idea. greetings from Chile good spear !!!!
I really like these type of videos where normal people make inventive solutions. I just bought an old eos 35mm camera and af lens at a boot sale for a tenner and was wondering how to maybe add a cheap digital camera on the back so i have a eos camera for less than £20. maybe not an ideal solution will try and be inventive like you.
Dear Robin, thanks for the video, it made me laugh a lot at the sheer audacity of it. Fantastic! I didn't quite catch the last thing you said "but I still like using my film cameras in black and white and processing them in ??Caphenol?? that is just awesome. " What was the processing for black and white please? best regards Graham.
Hi Graham, Thanks for your comment, glad you enjoyed it. I mainly use Xtol for my b& w film developing now but was doing a lot in Caffenol stand development. This is a great method as it allows the film to develop slowly over about 1 hour. Caffenol is a mixture of coffee + vitamin c + pottasium bromide (or iodised salt) + water. Search Caffenol on google and there are plenty of recipes and advise on different films. It’s good fun and very rewarding. All the best. Robin.
Nice one! I'd like to saw off the fixed lens of a Nikon Coolpix A and replace it with an f-mount . I could have the first Nikon APS-C interchangeable mirrorless camera!
Key takeaway: after seeing the 80 grit sandpaper in close proximity to the holy cow I ain't scared of cleaning my sensors anymore. Anyways, great job, man! Hope I'll do the same with my KNEB Hasselbladski when retired in 20 yrs - sensors gotta grow by then.
Cheers Gustave. The 80 grit was a bit slow by hand so I ended up using the edge of a belt sander. But kinda glad I never put that on RU-vid as it might have been just too much for some viewers. All the best mate.
Sir, I am so much inspired by your idea. I noticed you're using a motor drive. You might consider using the space in there to put (some of) the guts of the Sony in there? Then find a way to ditch the Sony housing. This would make the design a lot more subtle and pleasing to the eye. Just imagine how cool this camera will look with just an lcd screen on the back to show signs of your digital retrofit. Another idea might be to find one of those clunky Nikon data backs and modify that to fit the electronics into.
Thanks for your nice comments Gabor. Your exactly right about the motor drive potential for housing the digital guts and battery etc. Problem is way out of my ability to do so though as I have zero electronics skills as I am better on a nail gun than a soldering iron. The tricky part is to be able to swap the positions of the sensor and the shutter of the Sony. The shutter is redundant as you are using the shutter of the Nikon but the Sony won't work unless the shutter is connected (potential here to hack the Sony motherboard to negate the shutter). The ribbon cables are just long enough to allow them to reach the sensor over the shutter but mind you I blew up the last set when I stretched them too tight when I built a 16mb digital back onto a F3. You could build a really cool camera if you have the skills. Interesting when I had the F3 working for a while with a 16mb Sony back and the filters removed from the sensor is that I had a whopping 2 stops more light on the sensor compared to the previous setup that was 1 stop more. Hope you have a crack at it. Cheers.
@@RobinGuymer-Gizz Thank you for responding :) Yes, I see what you mean. Perhaps these flex cables exist in a longer version too. But I understand, getting this far was complicated enough. Either way, jolly good thing you engineered there. Quite unique and excellent thinking!
I'd got to 12:04 and I was thinking 'I would of got a roll of gaffer tape by now' and lo and behold, you produce the gaff lol, brilliant video mate really. If I had the time i'd do it. Great stuff and greetings from London UK
I understand the nostalgy of reviving a Nikon FE and all that is rather ingenuous but I wonder what's the deal... in the end you would have been set off much better with the Sony NEX 5 and an adapter ring to fit your Nikkor glass
Good on you Akshdeep. See if you can get a Sony Nex3N body as it only has a small handle on the face with no electronics under it. Therefore it will sit perfectly flat across the back of the SLR. If your any good with soldering there is a couple of RU-vid videos showing how to wire in a remote trigger. This means you can fit a button near the SLR shutter trigger. If your using an SLR that won't enable the IR filter to be fitted behind the mirror, then don't worry about it as the camera is more fun without, then being able to shoot entirely in Infra Red. But you will find you need to set the sensor in deeper to get good focus. Just check that the SLR you use has enough distance between the film rails and the shutter curtain so that your rebated sensor will not strike it. After you remove the IR filter off the sensor then also remove the small black separator strips as these can hit the shutter of the SLR, they are only sticky plastic strips. Good luck and get in contact if you need any help. Robin.
I like this. I've done some camera hacking, and some digicam repairs over the years. I have a Canon point-and-shoot that has focus problems, but isn't throwing a lens error! I may just decide to use it for it's image sensor and electronics instead.
Is this possible for a wooden camera with bellows? In place of a digital sensor, rig a gopro on top of the lens and replace the glass screen with an appropriate tablet device .
Hi Singer, Don't sand the entire glass. You need to remove the filter glass and the black tape under it and just leave the bottom glass that covers the sensor. Then you need to sand or grind both edges of the glass so the sensor fits in between the film rails. Then the plastic edging of the sensor also needs to be sanded down until it is level with the actual sensors themselves. This is about 1mm of plastic. Now be careful with the glass edges because one side is slightly overhanging the sensors more than the other and if you grind it in too far you will create a hole allowing dust onto the sensor itself and then it is "all over red rover". Hope that helps. Good luck mate! Robin.
@@RobinGuymer-Gizz Hey Robin! I've got my NEX5 sensor fitted right between the Maxxum 7000 film rails. Fits perfectly without sanding anything! The only problem i have now is mating the sony upside down on the back of it. The cables leading to the sensor are too short! Dang! Do you know if anyone sells longer cables to the sensor? It will work, but won't reach. I even sanded down the Sony's lens mount.. but still too short. Thanks again Robin!!
Great job on the conversion! Now I look at my Canon A1 & Sony Nex 5 with different eyes. I probably won't take them apart, tho - a EF-Sony E adapter already brought the nifty 50 to my Sony and it performs great there, despite the 1.6x crop :)
Thanks Adrian. I have been eyeing off my Canon A1 also. Looking at the guts of a Canon EOS M on the web, I reckon it might be able to have the shutter flipped out of the way so the sensor could drop into the film rails. It could make a pretty neat unit Canon / Canon. I have adapters for my Sony F3 also but I can tell you that my Nikon FE "electric film" camera seems to take better photos and sure looks, feels and sounds better lol. Regards Robin.
Wonderful and super creative...i have one notice though, what if you rotate the sensor ship inside instead of rotating the camera, then you get better control on the buttons?. Greetings from Germany
Thanks for your comment Amr. Good idea about the sensor and I wished it was possible. But the sensor is located closer to the base of the Nex and when I tried to mount it right way up the body of the Nex covers the Nikon eye piece so I wouldn't be able to see what I was photographing. Using live view would be inconvenient as I would have to focus by holding the Nikon shutter open first. It was a fun project but not a practical solution to converting a film camera to digital. Someone with better tech skills would do a better job than me. All the best.
Phew what a mighty MacGyver you are!!! PS your drive and intelligence way outperforms your hand shake...so what's next, eye surgery with a can opener? I think you could do it. Awesome man!!!
You beauty its a little ripper goes off like a frog in a sock. Good onya mate that's better than a boot full of XXXX and an esky full of prawns. Fairdinkum.
thanks, i am off to building one, now i have seen this i possible, and relatively simple . ohw your sense off humor is great, made me laugh many times throughout the video. thank you sir, allot
Hi Rosalía, The digital camera is a Sony Nex 3 with a 14.2mp APS-C sensor. I think a better one to use will be the Sony Nex 3N. It is quite flat across the face and there is no electronics behind the small handle so it should be able to be cut to fit perfectly flat across the back of an SLR. I just bought one and this is my next project. Robin.
I wouldn't do this myself for a variety of reasons, but I think as an exercise, it's very useful. I know if there was some commercial kit available, I'd turn my trusty mechanical Pentaxes into digital, because I like the form factor of the cameras. However, the resolution would have to be comparable to modern digital cameras, otherwise, I'd just rather scan film.
Now this is really hardcore stuff - but because of the potential of damaging everything, and the very strange looks, i'd never do this. And there is also the x1.5 Cropfactor then, because you do have a analogue SLR, which is Fullframe, and the Sensor is only APS-C (x1.52 Cropfactor, exactly) Instead, i do use my manual focus lenses together with a Lens Turbo Mk. II onto my old, but beloved NEX-5, do have 1 stop more light, and almost the same Focal Length. (x0.726 is exactly the Lens Turbo Cropfactor - so a 24mm Fullframe MF Lens is then 24x 1.5 x0.726 means 26.1xx mm Focal Length compared to Fullframe usually. I do hope that Nikon would release someday a digital S2 Rangefinder with F-Mount & FF-Sensor of course.
This is awesome, and the quality of the image is so nice. Do you have any of your photos uploaded anywhere, if not you should make a flickr or something!
Cheers Jacob. Yes I do have an album for this camera on Flickr flic.kr/s/aHskGXKESj I should put more on it. Another album for my B&W film developed in Coffee & Washing Soda & Fit C = Caffenol. www.flickr.com/gp/142208709@N08/1J17FN
I've just learn/understood/skimmed this term of 'front and back standards' of a large format camera and this video just puts it all together. Does makes sense now.
I have to ask myself....who would want to mess with an old analogue film camera when you can buy a complete ready to roll digital camera with 15 MP sensor, 30 X zoom lens, EVF and back LCD display for about 100 bucks on EBAY.
Major advantage of Film cameras: Great quality for low initial costs, also, the camera istelf has no bearing on the quality (unless it's a fixed lens camera)
@@ichbrauchmehrkaffee5785 It's a personal thing, something that all collectors of "things" get a feeling for with no apparent reason than I want it but don't need it......I toyed with the idea of stripping an Ipad down and mounting it into a half plate camera in a steam punk mode.........many years ago in the early 50's my late father had a Sanderson half plate camera that he regularly used.....beautiful woodwork and brass etc........I saw something like that on EBAY going for A$900 brand new, modern build for landscapes, portraits with cut film etc and I got the idea to buy one and an Ipad to do a retrofit for the fun of it......never was a fan of black and white but an Ipad would do colour very well and has a good resolution......it would look the part but would perform out of this World.
On the plus note you will always be more professional in the eyes of the public when shooting with not one but two cameras simultaneously! 😁 Great Video!
I wish you could show me how to do it like step by step on that white little Sony. I'm so addicted! Ps. I got FM2. I appreciate your ideas and really truely love it!
Thanks Kanin. If you go to this site xovercameras.blogspot.com/ I have done a step by step how to series that may help you. The best Sony to use would be either a Nex C3 or a 3N. Both these have a complete flat face that you can cut right back so the Nex sits flat on the camera back. Rather than use the existing back of your camera as FM2's are worth a lot now, you should just make a camera back out of sheet metal. It is quite easy to do. Otherwise buy another Nikon FE or FA that is dead and use the back off that. Have fun with it.
Hey Robin, I guess I'm a bit late to the party but I was wondering why it's necessary to have the shutter there at all? if it's sitting behind the sensor it's not really doing anything is it? anywyas thanks a bunch for making this video! Atwood
Good question Atwood but the Sony Next internal software looks for the shutter and if it is not there the Nex won't work. If you can hack the software you could fix this issue. Robin.
You should change the camera mount on the Nikon to m42 and use m42 lenses. (Why? -the flange distance is larger...hence you don’t have to do any filing) what do you think? Think outside the square? Let’s just keep the sensor out of the square.
SONY! FUJI! And Panasonic has nothing to worried about you, Why? It's 2018 Sony AR9 , Fuji newest XT camera with 4K video-24 Pixels, and Panasonic G9 also with improved 4K video, So keep tinkering, you might catch up with them.
