The Sitina 1 open-source full-frame mirrorless camera is coming along nicely

It was over a year ago that we first heard about Sitina 1. It’s an open-source full-frame interchangeable lens mirrorless camera. Being developed by Wenting Zhang, it features an off-the-shelf 10.7-megapixel Kodak CCD sensor.

As I said, it’s been a while, but now Wenting has posted an update on the status of the project to YouTube. It’s seen a quite few changes in the past year’s radio silence, but it’s starting to look exciting!

Sitina 1 – An open-source camera like no other

There are quite a few open-source cameras out there now. However, the problem is, many of them still require you to buy a Raspberry Pi – and a camera module to go with it. So, they’re mostly just a custom Raspberry Pi case and software. Not all of them, but most of them

The Sitina 1 is different in that it’s all been developed from the ground up using off-the-shelf components and custom pieces you can make yourself through 3D printing. It’s an extremely complex project, especially for one person. I mean, even camera manufacturers screw it up sometimes, and they’ve got huge teams.

Wenting is just one man, and he’s made the source code, schematics, 3d models and other files freely available on GitLab. So, if anyone else wants to have a go at making one of these, too, they can.

The latest update video shows that development is coming along at quite an impressive speed. Hopefully, it shows enough promise that others will want to get involved and contribute. It could become a great platform for basing custom cameras for all kinds of purposes and use cases. It’s something we’ve spoken about here on DIYP before.

Whatever happens, this project makes me happy and it’ll be interesting to see where things go.

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