Looks interesting, I might have to bring some of mine out of retirement and give them a new lease of lifeš
Prepare for an annoying voice over
Looks interesting, I might have to bring some of mine out of retirement and give them a new lease of lifeš
Prepare for an annoying voice over
Re-invention rather than invention I think - I definitely recall this sort of thing in the early days of digital.
Wasnāt it a big bulky pack on the back of the camera then though, Iām sure this is the 3rd or 4th version of this I have seen.
Well, my memory is not wonky but it looks like the product was, in fact, vapourware.
See the āSilicon Filmā section of this precis of PMA 2001
More info here
Though I canāt see the point TBH.
I remember talk of of a similar product years ago. Donāt know if it was ever produced but an inherent problem seemed to be producing a device that would fit the internals of all makes of camera. This is interesting, but I suspect itās vaporware or a product that simply doesnāt work.
Our son sent me info about this last last week. It has an M43 size sensor, meaning older wide angle lenses will all be āstandardsā and standards will be telephotos. Vapour-ware or not, itās hard to see any kind of market for this, especially now.
IMO of course.
With all the other vapourware
Wasnāt the problem with all of these that it was nigh impossible to get a sensor mounted where it aligned with the original focal plane?
I had a look in more detail and honestly canāt see how this has any point at all.
Apart from the fact that old film camera optics are not up to modern digital sensors the device comes with a bulky electronics/battery case designed to fit to the bottom of the camera and arrives with a āwide angleā adapter intended to overcome the effect of the narrower field of view on the sensor - but will degrade your old optics more.
If you are going to do this crazy thing (I advise against) it should have had a 35mm sensor.
Then thereās the price - $899 for the āfull retailā offering. You can get some very nice mirrorless compacts for that sort of money which will knock the socks of this - and be readily available from reputable manufacturers not someone youāve never heard of working out of his (or her) garrage.
I can see the point of a digital back on, say, and old medium format camera (anything of good quality having been designed with interchangeable backs anyway) - but not this.
I imagine that would be one āof the problems with the idea, yes.
Ditto the naysayers above - this has been tried before, and there really isnāt room in an old 35mm film camera for all the digital gubbins.
Itās fine on medium format (e.g. companies like Phase One who have been making digital backs for MF for years) but mass market consumers wonāt want to lug around a Hasselblad or Mamiya MF camera even if the price of a back was affordable (which it isnāt for most people!)
Digital MF backs are pretty much the preserve of advertising photographers, and even in that field they are dying out. A 150 megapixel Phase One back costs a mere Ā£42,500!
Quite so. I think my fave camera, having used all from 10"x8" - owned all from 5"x4" - to 16mm movie, was the Mamiya 645 with AE head and motor handgrip.
It handled like a 35mm but the digi backs for these things are big bucks. Thereās one on eBay that was Ā£17k new [!] going for Ā£1250.
But I agree with all who say the digi-for-film-camera notion is bonkers.
Iām amazed and very happy with what my 4/3 Olympus produces added to which it makes minimum demands on my poor old bones.
Have to be doing some serious photography to justify one of those.
Mind you - you can get more megapixels than that in a phone these days.
Indeed - itās really only high-end product advertising I think. And even that is being infiltrated by CGI - almost all watch āphotosā and āvideoā nowadays is directly computer generated from CAD files.
I used to do regular promotional videos for a watch retailer - everything on their website is now computer generated instead of being made in-camera.
Yes Motorola make one with a totally loony 200MP. That said the pixels in a phone sensor are a heck of a lot smaller than those in a camera so the quality isnāt the same, especially in low light.
A few manufacturers do.
The one in the Galaxy 23 ultra has 0.6Ī¼m sensors compared with 3.76Ī¼m in the Phase One - thatās 40x the area for the latter.
Looking at example pictures from the S23 Ultra though Iād say the 200Mp output isnāt worth it, better to use one of the binned/processed resolutions.
Itās some years now that Ken Rockwell, whose website can be useful when researching hardware, said āPixels arenāt what they used to beā
The Nik D700 had āonlyā 12 MP but they were big, fat pixels on a full 35mm x 24mm sensor, giving superb low light results and great tonal response.
Until replaced by the 24MP D600 second hand D700s were very hard to come by and expensive. People shooting with this 12MP camera were very reluctant to part with them.
I like a good full-fat pixel.
I still have one of the original Fujifilm X100 cameras - just 12.3 MP but its images are still special.
And back in the early 2000s, we shot some images for use on airport billboards - with the original Canon 1D - just 4 megapixels!
I have a Fujifilm X100v and a Leica X Vario back in storage in the UK, loved both of them for different reasons.
Unlike their contents, the plastic containers that film used to come in have remained very useful, long after going digital, I kept one in the car ashtray for parking meter change