Film SLR camera connected to a monitor

Hi! I am currently studying product design engineering and researching for my

final year project and would be grateful for any feedback on my design idea.

 

My idea is an underwater product/housing (to depths of about 5m) to hold and

enable a film (not digital) SLR camera to be connected to a remote monitor

above the water. The intended use is, for example, to allow photographers on

a boat to take see pictures on the monitor of dolphins bow riding to check the

animals are in frame etc before releasing the shutter.

 

Has anyone heard of this being done before? Is there a need for it? I would be

very interested in any information or thoughts people have on the matter!

 

Thank you very much!

ALi

And what exactly -- in a film camera -- will record the image that you will be transmitting to the monitor in the boat??

I suppose you could replace the prism with a digital sensor. Why are you insisting on using film?

 

You'll have some pretty nasty shaking/vibrations when placing a camera underwater that is attached to a boat moving fast enough for the dolphins to surf.

 

Interesting idea, but it may be difficult to make it work.

Have a look at.

 

http://www.jama.fr/remviewfcad.htm

 

H

Yeah, you could put a digital sensor in place of the film. Wait, I know. You could even call it SiliconFilm!

 

You have a major design issue. You have a mirror and a shutter in the way. I was gonna say you could modify a back to insert a fiber optic line to transmit a signal but it won't work. You need something separate from the film SLR to monitor the field of view. Have you also thought about how limited you'll be in tripping this thing remotely? Not all that many cameras have onboard wireless remotes.

 

If you could find way to get a fiber optic line to duplicate the field of view of the lens you'll use, you could mount it on the hotshoe.

 

Vibration has been covered already but what about lighting? Natural only or do you have plans to augment that? Also, I'd find a way to get something with a 250-back inside. Otherwise, limiting yourself to a 36-exposure roll will be frustrating having to stop and change all the time.

It's already been done, sort of. Contax has a preview system for their N series SLR that consists of something that screws to the eyepiece and has an LCD screen on the other end. Additionally, Kodak has a P&S that takes a picture on film but also has an LCD preview screen on the back similar to a digital P&S.

Something very similar has already been done in movie cameras. It's called video-assist. The video-assist system is available in the two most popular movie systems - Arriflex (from Munich) and Panavision (from California)in the 35mm format. In 16mm format it is also available from Arriflex.They have put a prism or mirror which flickers sycronized with the shutter speed of the camera. In between film exposures (which usually run around 24 frames per second)the image coming from the lens is sent to a video head via the tiny mirror at or near the film plane. This is attached to any VCR. Another good idea would be to use a camera like the EOS1R which uses a special mirror than doesn't move at all during exposure, and allows for a part of the light from the image to be "stolen" from the film and diverted to the ground-glass viewer. I'm sure you'll be able to work something out. Try the highly sensitive Sony video camera systems which record in extremely low-light situations and just film the viewer!!!

Thanks for all your responses!

 

I'm sorry but i'm not very good at explaining things but I'm not wanting to redesign the camera, I suppose I really only thinking about redesigning or adapting an existing underwater housing to be able to take video images from the SLR camera. I was anticipating to do this by basically attaching a small CCTV type video camera to the back of the viewfinder!

 

Why use film? Well, I was given the idea by a professional wildlife photographer who already had a film camera and said something like that would be useful, although initially i thought using digital would be simpler.

 

Thanks again.

give it a go! if it fails, so what? good designs can follow bad designs. just one thing, if you do it be sure to post you experience back here :-)

See: www.ternstyle.com and www.floatograph.com for video downlinks and other ideas. Other vendors likely offer these also. A search on "video taps" and "video downlinks" might prove fruitful. Good luck!

I believe David Doubilet uses a similar system from time to time to capture certain specialised shots - I think he called it "pole cam" or something like that.

 

It could be useful, yes. Having been on board a ship and tried to capture video of dolphins off a small waterproofed CCD camera on the end of a long pole, I can tell you it's a real challenge! Would be really hard with a bulky SLR housing...

 

Yes, it would have useful applications, but the market would be extremely limited.

 

HTH

 

James.