This guy converted a film camera into digital and here are some shots that he took
Sep 8, 2020
Dunja Đuđić
Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, concerts, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.
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Some photographers still debate why film is better than digital and vice versa. But hey, why don’t we have both? Sanasol took his old Nikon FM and turned it into digital. It even has Wi/Fi connection so the photos are immediately transferred to his phone.
So how does this work? Well, I’m not exactly sure about the technical details or magic behind it. But after translating Sanasol’s tweets from Japanese, I figured out that he used something like Silicon Film’s EFS-1. That concept has been around for almost two decades now, revived by other companies, but it hasn’t really become popular.
However, Sanasol built his own solution. He used an M5 camera’s ESP32 module ad 3D-printed some parts himself.
The digital cartridge that he made is placed inside the film chamber and its power button is connected with the film advance knob. Since there’s a Wi-Fi connection, the photo is transferred to the phone as soon as it’s shot. Here’s how it looks:
Sanasol kindly shared some of the test shots that he took with us, along with a promise that he’ll also make a more detailed tutorial soon. So, make sure to follow his work on YouTube and Twitter.
Update 23 September 2020: Sanasol has shared a video tutorial that shows how he converted a flm camera to digital. He also shares blueprints for 3D printed parts so if you like, you can make your own analog-digital crossover.
[via Nikon Rumors]
Dunja Đuđić
Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, concerts, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.
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19 responses to “This guy converted a film camera into digital and here are some shots that he took”
Reče mi da će napraviti tutorial kako je to sklopio, pa se nadam da će nam dati i dozvolu da ga objavimo. :) Super je projekat!
Da li je on Srbin?
According to how he treats the film plate, I’d say he’s far away from a Full Frame image – not even APS-C.
MAYBE it’s a mobile phone sensor size. But then – why using this….?
While I appreciate the DIY skills, this is hardly a new concept. Digital backs and digital inserts have been round since the early days if commercially available digital photography.
‘-this is hardly a new concept.’ Neither are these comments about it not being original or new.
The guy made a digital back at home for fun. And it seems to work better than some of the commercial variants seen on Kickstarter.
Too many film cameras out there for this to be commercially viable. Most film users are already into digital…
why not to go out and take photos in various situation when converting a film camera to digital? the pictures shown are so boring
You forgot about the whole pandemic situation?
Ow, I did not, I just really didn’t like the photos, they are just not good. That being said, kudos to the guy for trying.
I mean the article did say that they were test photos. Any time I get a new camera or lens I know that the first 100 or so photos I take with it while messing around are going to be terrible too. ?
I converted my 30y old film camera into digital simply by inserting gopro into the camera with few cuts and tweaks and photos are 10 times better then this one.
Have vague memory of something like this early 80s when digital was not much more than a dream. Was a sensor with the electronics in what was basically a film cannister very much like the picture here.
“why?”
Because you can get slr cameras and lenses for very cheap at thrift stores, and by putting a digital back you save the money you spend on the film process. You get the interchangeable lens camera experience for very very cheap. Yes, it is not the same as a 500 dollars kit but not everyone has 500 dollars to spend.
Some people like to create things for the sake of achieving something, that is what creative people do, I assure you the person who created this has learned a lot more than photography.
Not to mention cheapest full frame you can buy probably.
I guess if you already have a 3D printer laying around and it’s just for fun, awesome. Certainly doesn’t look super reliable and the photo quality looks like a toy camera though.
imo it’s a good skills demo. my guess is the project itself is the goal. I would accept it as a senior project.
Cool that he was able to do this, but the pictures look terrible – unless there’s some kind of major compression from the upload, it looks like something from a smartphone circa 2008, aside from the depth of field.
Nice proof of concept build. The first digital camera was built by a Kodak engineer in 1975. It was the size of a breadbox, weighed over 25 lbs. and took .01 megapixel images in black & white. Look how far digital cameras have come since then. The first commercial digital cameras were sold in the early 90’s. Kudos to him for doing this project. It would be interesting to see where this could lead to. I have a few old film slrs laying around that I would consider converting once the tech evolves a bit.
Looks like he’s used a raspberry pi (or equivalent SBC) and camera module with stock lens striped off, stuffing the SBC into the film canister cavity, and allowed the sensor to intrude past the film plane (focus past infinity at the infinity stop, loses some close focus). The sensor is tiny, so the crop factor is enormous. No wide angle shots here even with exotic superwide lenses.