Classic to digital ???

I wonder if, in the future, someone might develop a simple drop in

digital recording unit to use in place of film??? Kind of like having

a small unit to place in the film exposure area of a Nikon F or Leica

III with the bulk of the electronics in the film canister area. Hope

someone is working on such a project because I am still worried about

the future of film.

a company, "Foveon" I believe, already ventured unsuccessfully into that arena. I

agree that would be the way to go, I wouldn't even need the playback screen, just

shoot as you would film and process at home.

heres a link to another company trying the same: http://www.ideinc.com/

silfilmright.html

 

Todd

try again: http://www.ideinc.com/silfilmright.html

That sounds great,but these projects never work with older cameras like leicas,pentax k-1000,not talking of medium format.

 

The project would never go to mass production(there have been a few attempts) and if they do have a x2 crop factor and cost to much.

 

If they would make a thingy of that type for 35mm full format,in the 6 Mpixel vicinity , that would work on any standard 24x36 camera I'd get it even if it's pricy.

 

my 2x10exp-6 cents

Its been tried in the past as a penny stock company scam and actually does not make sense at all. How would an old camera INTERFACE with the digital unit? Which button would you push? And who would spend millions for special tooling just to locate the focal plane correctly in an obsolete camera that is worth less every day/hour? Its utopia-thought. Anybody with business acumen would not invest in designing a product for a declining market. No investors would be crazy enough to buy into the business plan. Just look a Leica right now as a sample..The future of film is very, very clear..(and I like film a great deal) Film is finished. enjoy it while you can.

That's just what I had in mind--no screen etc., just a recording and storage unit but in 7 mp. at least. Perhaps with an adjustable recording area for use in many 35mm cameras.

<i>Film is finished. enjoy it while you can.</i><p>

Given a few years, or maybe a few dozen years, the same could be said of us all.

Obviously what you suggest is not available at present, but with the growth of the digital process who knows what will be possible several years from now. Remember how limited hard drives were just a decade ago. With the millions of film cameras there it is easy to imagine solutions to the problem. Three years ago five MP was a dream; in another year or two it will be the norm for the cheapest PS digitals. It appears that the rate of progress is increasing logrhythmically. When Mandler introduced computer calculation to Leica Canada the computers were gigantic and had less than one thousandth the capabilities that are run of the mill in current PCs! Why not the same expansion in digital?

Yes, just what we need. An electronic sensor so all of our photos can have the same grainless, antiseptic look. One of the cool things about film is that each film has its own identity.

 

Tri-X, Plus-X, HP5, FP4, Pan F, Agfapan, etc., etc.

 

Yes, yes, you can duplicate that with a computer. Why do that when you can have the real thing. And for me, an inkjet print simply doesn't compare with a darkroom print.

 

The film market will find a settling point. We're probably near that point now. Digital has plateaued (at least in the P&S market and nearing that point in the SLR segment). The latest offerings are unimpressive and have done little to convince me that it's time to dump film forever.

 

We'll have fewer choices. In the meantime, I've loaded up on some of my favorite b/w emulsions: 300 feet of Technical Pan, 300 feet of Agfapan APX100 and others.

 

I have no time for hand-wringing over the future of film.

I currently enjoy at least using some of my old lenses on a digital body. There are adapters available for using different lenses on the Canon DSLR's (other makes too I expect). AE/manual only of course but results are excellent and great fun too.

I'm with you on that Mike! Buy up film and refrigerate it & photographic paper & chemicals. Just got my enlarger. That time is coming so we must be prepared.

Good remarks Mike. While I LIKE digital photography I too, am fatigueing of the same, same, same look of the images. In the photo.net images, the monotony of perfection is also showing quite a bit and obviously generates some controversy when I comment on "camera perfect, photographer skills sucks" issues.. This is why in recent postings, I have started slamming an 85B warmup filter on my Olympus Wide Zoom 8080 to change the look of the image. I have parked the digital unit and am now in the film mode again...

Some day there probably will be a film sensor wafer that you can cut to size with a pair of scissors and just stick onto the film gate with duct tape. The controls will be on a wireless box thingie that fits into the hot/cold shoe. No further modification required.

<p>

And so ?

I have a Paranoid Conspiracy Theory, cooked up in my own little brain, about the fact that around here at least (Toronto) film NEVER goes on sale, despite the fact that demand must be plummeting. THEY want to twist our arms into buying digital.

 

Are there any *normal* people out there who've had similar thoughts?

Maybe this is obvious, but I wonder if film is going to have an increasing status as *the* digital recording unit. This may contribute to the market for film, as long as really high-quality digital remains out of reach for most creative users.

 

This is the way I'm doing most of my B & W work now-- I use mostly XP2, and I get it developed and burned to a CD in ~6 megapixel scans. The odd shot that I want to do something serious with, I get rescanned at ~26 megapixels. Far as I'm concerned, Ilford XP2 is the digital back for my old medium format cameras.

 

I still use Tri-X and FP4, and often I'll do the same scene on XP2 and on conventional film. The downside of this strategy is I'm growing a freezer full of exposed 120 Tri-X, because I procrastinate developing.

To Mike Elek: Thank you for summing this whole digital thing up. I can't argue with any of your points. VERY WELL SAID! THANKS! I realize that the original posting had to do with converting a film camera to digital, but this subject has been hacked to death so many times....I promised myself that I wasn't going to even contribute an opinion on the whole thing.... that there is all of this concern about who's going to not make film anymore, who is, blah blah blah. The fact of the matter is that these two mediums are going to co-exist even if digital medium will probably (and is) more common than film. But here is a thought that perhaps is worth considering that was brought to my attention, is consider China, USSR, Eastern Europe,Africa, etc. Consider the population that doesn't have a computer, let alone power to run one, but I would bet that there are still film cameras in these populations that see regular use. Economics would dictate that even a disposable camera would be a luxury to some, but that is a total of a huge populous that would be using film for quite some time. In the mean time, my way of thinking is this: I purchase film when and where I need it. I shoot with one my classics every week. I develop it the old fashioned way in my basement. Film will ALWAYS be available somewhere. I don't give it a second thought. Not being sarcastic, 'nuff said....Have Fun! mark

If you don't mind using just the lens, the Kapture Group, has an interface to hookup manual 35 mm lens such as Nikon, Olympus, Cannon FD to digital medium format backs. For 4x5 cameras, Better Light produces scanning back that replaces the film holder. However, these solutions are quite expensive.

Technically, I don't see the problem as that difficult. All you need is a sensor on a thin mount with a microswitch that can engage the sprocket drive wheel. When you wind on, the unit switches on. When the shutter opens and triggers the sensor array, you know you have the picture so you write it to EEPROM and are ready for the next. If the microswitch is on a sliding mount you can make it engage with the sprocket drive in whatever camera.

 

The problems are commercial. How big a market would there really be for such a device to justify the tooling, production and advertising? At the moment, as Silicon Film discovered, there's just not the demand.<div></div>

What I'd like to see are advances in scanners. There are some good ones, but there is room for improvement and I'd really like to see a Raw scanning standard for 'digital negatives' similar to Adobe's DNG format so you could take a Raw scan directly into Photoshop or a similar editor.

 

Gene