Turn your 35mm SLR into a dSLR!

There was a product like that called 'efilm' or something about 10 years ago by a Californian company where you could literally just put a sensor in a film camera but it never came to market or made it beyond the concept stage because as Amateur Photographer put in an answer to a question a few months ago 'prices were high and resolutions were not plus the big camera manufacturers were not very pleased with the idea stealing revenue away from them'.

In theory it could work, but it would be very difficult to implement I imagine and plus how would you control the functions on it? I suppose you would have to have a wireless controller or something for the functions on it as well as a viewing screen.

Just too complex really.
 
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I'd love a digital back for my dynax 7. Or someone should invent a digital film canister of some description that would just pop into a conventional 35mm camera and fool it into thinking there's film in there. Would be quite cool if you could set it to 36 exposures, fixed iso and then pop it out and plug it into a usb socket :)
 
srichards said:
I'd love a digital back for my dynax 7. Or someone should invent a digital film canister of some description that would just pop into a conventional 35mm camera and fool it into thinking there's film in there. Would be quite cool if you could set it to 36 exposures, fixed iso and then pop it out and plug it into a usb socket :)
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Be even cooler if, after you take it out of the camera, you can dunk it in some magical fluids by a special process and the pictures magically appear! You could maybe either fix the ISO when you buy it in the shop, or perform a bit of voodoo as you put it in the camera!. ;)
 
offline said:
Be even cooler if, after you take it out of the camera, you can dunk it in some magical fluids by a special process and the pictures magically appear! You could maybe either fix the ISO when you buy it in the shop, or perform a bit of voodoo as you put it in the camera!. ;)
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How about something that shot film and digital simultaneously? As in, the sensor would be behind the film :cool:
 
The 2 in 1

Film or digital you choose the back you want to use. Quite old now

leica2.jpg
 
To quote many great modern philosophers, "lol" ;)

THANK YOU FOR
YOUR INTEREST IN RE-35.

SOME GOOD NEWS:

The feedback to Re-35 has truly been overwhelming. It seems Re-35 really addresses a need and people worldwide can’t seem to wait to get their hands on our "product".

THE BAD NEWS:

Some things are too good to be true!

Re-35 does not really exist. We (the design company Rogge & Pott) created Re-35 as an exercise in identity-design. We invented the "product" because it was something, that we had wished for for a long time (as many others).
We launched the website and sent out "press releases" on April first - thinking, that the date would make clear, that Re35 is just wishful thinking - a classic April Fools Prank!

A lot of people didn’t hear about Re-35 until after April first, so we added this disclaimer

HOWEVER:

All this attention Re35 ist getting might actually be good for something. It proves, that there is a gigantic community of photographers with analog equipment out there that is desperately waiting for a product like this to come along- and we are looking into the possibilities.

We hope there are no hard feelings
and that you are not too disappointed.

And thanks for all the positve feedback!

Cheers from Germany.

Henning Rogge
Click to expand...
 
Joking aside.....you're all mad

I thought the whole point of shooting a film camera was because it shoots....err......film, who the hell wants digital pictures from a film camera ???
Don't we make enough synthetic blandness to sink the Queen Mary as it is without arseing up the output of our beloved film cameras too...:D
 
joxby said:
Joking aside.....you're all mad

I thought the whole point of shooting a film camera was because it shoots....err......film, who the hell wants digital pictures from a film camera ???
Don't we make enough synthetic blandness to sink the Queen Mary as it is without arseing up the output of our beloved film cameras too...:D
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I would love a way to get my contax g2 to shoot digital! The lens quality and body are just superb.
 
^ yeah exactly, it's shooting with the actual cameras that I tend to get the most enjoyment out of (I enjoy film as a medium and respect it as well, of course)
 
If I want to shoot Digital, I've got a perfectly good digital SLR with all the useful options that entails. When I shoot on a film camera, it's simply because I want to get a film out of the camera at the end of play. Then I have the fun of processing the film to look forward to. It's a way of getting more time on my hobby, when my actual time out shooting is limited by other factors.

I'm not a film hardliner - I have a EOS-3 as a workhorse slr, one that I can switch to and from with the digital, share lenses with the digital, and generally work with in a similar manner to what I do with my EOS-7D. I also have a Canon A-1, primarily for sentimental reasons - and because I couldn't bear to see all that lovely FD glass going to waste. I enjoy shooting that, partly because it keeps me in touch with the feelings I had shooting film when I was getting started, and partly because being MF it's a slightly slower, more considered way of working. The A-1 with either the 28mm or the 50mm f1.4 is also light enough to wander around all day with it hung around your neck... not something I can do comfortably with the EOS-3 and the 24-105L. Most of my other film cameras are a bit more special-usage, the Holgas for example rely on film for the look and feel of the shot, so are pretty much outside the scope of this discussion. The Perkeo is as retro as it gets, and I wouldn't want to put film in it... it'd be a bit like "finding Moses' DVD collection" ;) Now the Bronica... well - I have to say, medium format digital in a more affordable form than an adaptor plate and Hassie digital back does have a certain appeal...

If I had something like a Leica rangefinder with the posh glass that goes with it, and was into shooting street for example, then my feelings might be different - a never-ending roll of 35mm in a small silent box with quality glass - it'd certainly kill off the M9 in double quick time!

Overall though, I can live without it.
 
I wish that people made a Film SLR, with that same feeling, the shutter speed dials, cocking the shutter, and all that jazz, just with a sensor in the back. No screen no nothing, just a card slot and a battery shooting film style just digital outcomes :)
 
That is why the Fuji X100 appeals to me, it still looks (I havn't played with one) like a film camera with the dedicated analogue controls.
 
I tried an Rd-1, although a Rangefinder, it still had all the analogue controls which were amazing, felt so nice to use ! Pitty about the price though :(
 
SimonUK said:
I wish that people made a Film SLR, with that same feeling, the shutter speed dials, cocking the shutter, and all that jazz, just with a sensor in the back. No screen no nothing, just a card slot and a battery shooting film style just digital outcomes :)
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I suppose there's always the Hasselblad route for that - it is an SLR ;)

Just a bit pricey if you're going to do film and digital, though.
 
joxby said:
who the hell wants digital pictures from a film camera ???
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Have you compared the size of an Olympus OM2 with a 35mm digital lately? Not speaking of the viewfinder ...

All the technology has progressed amazingly fast, but digital SLRs got heavier and while it works a lot slower, the metering in old film bodies still does the job. It's bizarre isn't it?
 
Thom Hogan reckoned the FM3D made it into prototype, but that Nikon decided not to produce it. That seems to be about as close as a 35 mm film SLR converted to digital got, apart from the Leica R cameras with interchangeable backs?

There was a lot of discussion on DPR a few years ago, asking why no-one offered a digital conversion for the classic SLRs. IIRC, most people reckoned it could be done, but not in a very practical way, and that the market would be far too limited to make it a viable business proposition. Pity. I'd like a digital F2, although I wouldn't be prepared to sacrifice mine for a one way conversion.
 
^ indeed, although by that stage film cameras were already big hulking DSLR-looking things, rather than what most people in this thread are dreaming of, which is sort of like a Nikon FM2/Canon F1/other 70s camera with an SD card slot...! It's a shame how big cameras are, a Pentax ME Super, heck even a Rollei 35 shoots on a far larger surface area than say a gripped 7D/D300s!
 
Kodak's The DCS Story, written in 2004 by Jim McGarvey, Kodak's lead engineer on the DCS cameras (cleared for public distribution in 2009)

Electro-Optic Camera (1988)

By 1987, Kodak had developed the world's first
megapixel CCD imager, the M1. A US Government
customer contracted with the Federal Systems Division
(FSD) to incorporate the M1 into a standard 35 mm
camera body to create the first megapixel portable
digital camera, truly the prototype of the digital
camera system (DCS) product line. It was designed for covert use, with the black box in a camera bag
and the ribbon cable to the camera body concealed inside the neck strap. Images were downloaded
from the internal hard drive by docking the black box on an Exabyte tape archive unit. (The first
digital camera dock!) The Canon F1 film camera body had no electronic interface, so the shutter
release was detected by monitoring the battery current. The imager package was mounted to a TE
cooler to reduce noise, but cooling was limited to prevent fogging the cover glass and was not very
effective. Only one unit was built. The black box electronics were wire wrapped.

  • Stock Canon F1 body with motor drive
  • Monochrome KAF-1400 (M1) imager (1320 x 1035, 6.8 µm) with thermoelectric cooler
  • 10bit A/D Logarithmic amplifier
  • 10-Mbyte buffer for 6-image burst; buffer image count display
  • Internal 100-Mbyte SCSI hard drive holds 60 images; disk image count display
  • Docking archive unit with 2000-MByte Exabyte 8 mm SCSI tape drive and battery charger
  • Raw image files in Unix TAR format; Time/Date stamp
  • Intervalometer; log histogram. Pixel value readout.
  • Image delete. Image recover; disk erase; disk format
  • Alphanumeric LCD with menus, status, and error messages
  • Three-color LED disk, buffer, battery status indicators on camera back
  • Intel 80C196 uController, PL/M
  • Internal lead acid camcorder battery
Click to expand...

Important bit highlighted :D

Although the [large] SCSI drive and associated electronics at the end of the ribbon cable might cramp your style.
 
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I have a Phase One H10 11MP back for my Hasselblads, but apart from the problem of the 1.6x crop (36mmx24mm sensor) the carrying around of a Macbook Pro and Firewire Cable just make shooting on film all the more pleasureable an experience.

One day, I will get a Phase One P65+ back (no crop factor although 6cm x 4.5cm) and doesn't need a laptop to make it work. Downside is the current price at circa £25,000.
 
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