Amazing! This guy turned a Konica S3 into a digital rangefinder.

honozooloo said:
If only someone figured out a way to create a sensor suite that could be fit into custom film doors (for those SLRS/cameras that have them, sorry Leica M) I could imagine a modular system allowing you to buy a sensor that snapped/installed into different back doors for use with a variety of SLRs/RFs.

3-D printing could also solve the problem of creating the variety of backs the world would need. If Nikon managed this trick, it would have far outsold the Df.

Then again, building something like that with a FF sensor and all the necessary electronics is no small task.

But the eternal optimist in me always thought it would be a matter of time till we saw a kickstarter for such a thing.
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A modular retrofit design is exactly why this hasn't been accomplished thus far.
 
CameraQuest said:
I wonder if he could do it for a Leica M2 or Nikon SP.

Stephen
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An SP would probably be easier, because you can remove the whole back and fabricate a custom one based on that. An M2 would definitely be a one-way conversion, although still an awesome one. If you're lucky you wouldn't need remove the takeup spool in the SP, so you could even have a combination film/digital RF!

Major credit to the engineering genius who put this thing together.
 
photomoof said:
I hate to mention it, and spoil the fun, but it is not a rangefinder. It is just a disguised point 'n shoot digital.
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If your definition of a rangefinder is a camera which uses a triangulation focus system with a mirror and a beam splitter then, it is a rangefinder. Why do you think it is not?
Cheers
Brett
 
I calibrated the lens to focus to infinity using the camera’s live view, and then calibrated the viewfinder to focus accurately.
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Nicely done work to have ex-film camera with results as regular as any digital not-expensive P&S, or worst, if judging by examples provided.
 
That's really great. I love seeing hacks like that mating old and new. But he should have sanded off the Bayer filter while he was at it (very fine sand paper, of course).
 
I personally wouldn't do it to any of my film cameras either, even with the gun barrel pointed to me, but an amazing mod project indeed!

Now should anybody start making a proper affordible DIY drum scanner project using 3D printing tech and sourcable parts. That'd be THE thing, not to downgrade the soulful analog into inferior mathematically cheating digital levels but to upgrade the real thing into modern levels. Analog misses so much technological development since the ditial took over in the 90s.
 
CameraQuest said:
I wonder if he could do it for a Leica M2 or Nikon SP.
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Would be interesting, but he had to machine away bits and pieces all around the film gate, where a FP shutter camera has the shutter - it might need some base platform other than a Nex where the sensor peripherals are all behind rather than next to the sensor.
 
photomoof said:
You are all right of course, his description totally threw me.

He misspelled "digitize" as "digitise," and I read it as "disguise."

I read by sight not spelling, a bad habit of being a self-taught reader, when I learned to read I did not know about letters, only word shapes.
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Not a misspelling. It's the English spelling not the American. 😀
 
Originally Posted by photomoof
You are all right of course, his description totally threw me.

He misspelled "digitize" as "digitise," and I read it as "disguise."
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Nigel Meaby said:
Not a misspelling. It's the English spelling not the American. 😀
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So in the view of an American if someone spells digitise with an 's' instead of a 'z' it's a spelling mistake.

Not bad considering I got lambasted by one of the mods a couple of weeks ago for being too Aust centric in my language ... "we're international after all!"

Such hypocrasy! LOL 😀
 
I like to see youth still has inspiration, that's great.

Now it takes another breakthrough to make this mods reliable and easily repeatable. To get to the point when quality of parts and labor (soldering, too) will not be weak point in long term.

My wishlist is to make double battery chamber able to accomodate battery-specific shell as battery he is using now may be extinct after 10 years. Or connect battery using cable with battery-specific port which can be swapped.

I like he put buttons on left side - right away from where they get in the way and get pressed accidentally on regular cameras.
 
A great story indeed and fun to do I think (if he really did this, because it's still the internet and people can show us anything they want us to believe 🙂)
In the nineties there was a project in which digital backs would be developed that would fit any existing slr. It was announced in all photography magazins, there were even pictures, but it was never heard of after that.
What puzzles me is that so many people here would like their analog cameras to be adapted to digital in this way. I mean, most of us like film and film cameras and if we want to use digital, we get a digital camera, so why sacrifice one of our beloved analog cameras to make it digital?
Frank
 
A very nice mod!

In one sense this is the most advanced digital rangefinder in public existence: it allows moving the magnification spot from the center of the sensor.
 
Wait, but exposure? Controls for speed and aperture are still buttons, right? I know, KAS3 is Tv camera so no aperture ring is there.

So it's mainly for lens....which could be used on mirrorless with adapter. And for RF patch in finder. Still, nice exercise for mind and hands.
 
sevo said:
Would be interesting, but he had to machine away bits and pieces all around the film gate, where a FP shutter camera has the shutter - it might need some base platform other than a Nex where the sensor peripherals are all behind rather than next to the sensor.
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Exactly, the main barrier to putting in a full frame sensor into a film camera is that in order to get the correct flange distance you have to modify the film gate. It's not just a matter of putting an FF sensor onto the back door of a film camera since digital sensors are deeper than a sheet of film, so you always end up having a more or less irreversible modification - unless the sensor is smaller than the film gate and can fit some way into the hole, but then you end up with a crop body.

It's a really awesome project here though, and massive kudos to the guy. The attention to detail is really impressive, I've come across a few of these projects online but this definitely takes the cake as being the most convincing. If he were to release a kit with the 3d printed parts I'd interested in having a crack myself.
 
Merlijn53 said:
... I mean, most of us like film and film cameras and if we want to use digital, we get a digital camera, so why sacrifice one of our beloved analog cameras to make it digital?
Frank
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I like the completely simple, manual, ability with a purely mechanical film camera to:
- choose film ISO
- select shutter speed directly, not automatically or via a menu
- select aperture directly, not automatically or via a menu
- focus directly, manually

So in a digital back add-on, I would look for:
- A control to set the ISO
- A button to 'Save to Memory'

Simples (at least in principle) 😉. But I don't see a 'market' for it.
I believe (others may correct me or give detail on this) that it is possible to get effective emulation of this in some high-end digital camera(s), but at a cost way out of consideration for me. Especially as I am most interested in MF.
 
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