Diy Digital Rf - Is It Possible?

Dear aniMal,

If you had read from my first post in this thread [and in other threads], you would have learned that my original intent was only to covert my Nikon F (1), F2 (4), FM2T (1) and FM3A (2) into digital.

[My RF experience started 40 years ago with a Minolta Hi-Matic 7s, then an M4-2, a CLE, a Konica C35, a Contax G2...but always used Nikons.]

I ventured back into RF only because I want less bulk still, hence a ZM purchased 2 years ago...and still hoping for a ZMd, soon.

I began to think Leica partly because of a ready-made retrofit market...no difference from photogrammetry. Their arrogance and the M8/9 benchmark pricing beg for a repeat of history. So I bought an M2 and a R-D1 and started making measurements...just like 2 decades ago.

Many experts in RFF do not believe Zeiss will make a ZMd...I beg to differ. Some argued that the Leica 6-bit is magic that only Leica could...I laughed. Many had no clue what I was talking about...so respond with dogma...:bang:

You and Brian Sweeney have now shown real interest...a good start. 🙂
 
Jinky said:
I know the crop factor may not be to everyones likes but would the innards of an Olympus E420 fit into a rangefinder body? All you need to do then is fix the internals at the register distance for an M lens and you're good to go.
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The simplest way is to gut a Nikon D100...as did R-D1.

In digital imaging, image sizes is measured in [square] pixels, not FF or else.:bang:

Crop factor is a concern only because wide angle lens choices became rather limited, not to mention the DoF characteristics. It is tough to achieve a 35mm/f1.4 equivalent...no 18/1.4 or 24/1.4 exists.
 
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Frankie said:
Crop factor is a concern only because wide angle lens choices became rather limited, not to mention the DoF characteristics. It is tough to achieve a 35mm/f1.4 equivalent...no 18/1.4 or 24/1.4 exists.
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Actually two 24/f1.4 exist (from Leica and Canon). Leica also has a 21/f1.4, possibly thinking about the M8 crop factor crowd here. You're right about the 18.

Your project sounds highly interesting. So far I'm skeptical because I've seen everybody fail who tried (Huw Finney comes to mind), failure meaning that nobody ever was able to show anything that came close to what they wanted to create. But if your skills and the connections to your old gang are such as you say, and you manage to do this, my hat's off to you and I'll be in the list of preorders.
 
I would be happy to Alpha test the camera back, and am pretty decent at finding bugs in code, especially image-oriented hardware. Time would not permit be to undertake the full firmware development task. But it would be fun, and like the "old days", ie what I did in the 1980s. I still develop realtime firmware for a living, but no longer for imaging sensors.
 
rxmd said:
Actually two 24/f1.4 exist (from Leica and Canon). Leica also has a 21/f1.4, possibly thinking about the M8 crop factor crowd here. You're right about the 18.

Your project sounds highly interesting. So far I'm skeptical because I've seen everybody fail who tried (Huw Finney comes to mind), failure meaning that nobody ever was able to show anything that came close to what they wanted to create. But if your skills and the connections to your old gang are such as you say, and you manage to do this, my hat's off to you and I'll be in the list of preorders.
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Dear rxmd [prescription doctor?],

I didn't bother to do a through lens inventory...M-mount or otherwise. f1.4 at super-wide angle will be priced beyond the reach of real people anyway.

I will be doing much research for now [and hope RFF members might contribute]. The go-no-go decision will be made by Photokina 2010. I am still hoping Zeiss will play ball with a ZMd.

Hitting Leica is kind of a sport in our field, Leica-Heerbrugg that is...formerly known as Leica GeoSystems now renamed ERDAS.

I did have the distinction of killing Leica-Heerbrugg's [also the Zeiss equivalent] pride and joy OR-1 Orthoprojector that cost $750,000++ in 1991 with a $25,000 software system. Their world was never the same since.

A call to arms in my field since then would, and did, generate enough investors if only in the form of a pre-order...as is happening now. Many still would not believe I would retire finishing my last game...essentially a sociological revolution based on technology already accomplished.

Study Brian Sweeney's picture attached in a previous post and you will see why.
 
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Brian Sweeney said:
I would be happy to Alpha test the camera back, and am pretty decent at finding bugs in code, especially image-oriented hardware. Time would not permit be to undertake the full firmware development task. But it would be fun, and like the "old days", ie what I did in the 1980s. I still develop realtime firmware for a living, but no longer for imaging sensors.
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You are on...another 20% discount? 😀
 
As I mentioned, I called my designer-friend for a discussion on this. He is sceptical, but then he has not read the thread here. (and I intend to read all of it later on, just haven´t got the time right now).

Anyway, it dawned on me when discussing it that this project is a real underdog, and one with winning chances. Why? Because the big ones will not be interesting in something like this at all, precisely because it would undermine the sale of current models. Leica would perhaps have done it at an earlier stage if possible, but I am quite sure they are caught up in the same mindset by now - just see for how long the upgrade program lasted...

I hope that there is a FF digital Zeiss waiting for us of course, but I still suspect the price would be somewhat high. Also for a digital Voigtländer, or made by other established companies. They would never dream of doing something as simple as what is scetched here, it could actually be bad publicity not having a screen and such.

That actually makes for an oportunity I feel...

It could also be a project where the core developers have the control, but where others all over the world could contribute somewhat. Lets say that the anticipated price will be $1000, or $2000 for that matter - then 10% of this could be payable as a combination of reservation sum for getting the first version, and small venture capital risked if it should not work out... I have often spent $100-200 on much worse things, and would just enjoy having a bet like this in!

Just to repeat myself - it would be a real dream come true for me to have a digital sensor in a mechanical camera. You get the best of two worlds - the mechanics works forever, and under the worst conditions. And that holds true also for electronics without moving parts!

Would it even be possible to do this with high class connectors? Or soldering at least some of the connectors? Perhaps sealing with epoxy or something - then I could just end up being very sturdy and reliable - and then matching old cameras even better...
 
Frankie said:
You are on...another 20% discount? 😀
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So- what processor are we going to use? I'll have to read up on the new open-source image file formats. I suspect "NATO standard Image Format" is out. That is what we used in the early 1980s for a Digital Infrared Sensor that we built.
 
aniMal said:
Anyway, it dawned on me when discussing it that this project is a real underdog, and one with winning chances. Why? Because the big ones will not be interesting in something like this at all, precisely because it would undermine the sale of current models. Leica would perhaps have done it at an earlier stage if possible, but I am quite sure they are caught up in the same mindset by now - just see for how long the upgrade program lasted...

That actually makes for an oportunity I feel......

......Just to repeat myself - it would be a real dream come true for me to have a digital sensor in a mechanical camera. You get the best of two worlds - the mechanics works forever, and under the worst conditions. And that holds true also for electronics without moving parts!

Would it even be possible to do this with high class connectors? Or soldering at least some of the connectors? Perhaps sealing with epoxy or something - then I could just end up being very sturdy and reliable - and then matching old cameras even better...
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Pickett Wilson
Well, Frankie, you are laying it out pretty good here. If there is a viable market for such a thing (which I doubt), then some company with the R&D money, equipment and manpower will be all over it and beat you to market! 🙂

I'm not sure, though, if there are really many folks who want to spend a grand making their old camera a limited functionality digital camera.

My answer to Pickett Wilson: "Funny that was precisely the counter-argument 20 years ago. Many larger companies have capital...and a brand name...thus wouldn't do it, avoiding being labeled second fiddle..."​

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At that time, Leica-Heerbrugg [allied with Synercom], Zeiss [allied with Intergraph], and Kern [allied with Atlas] had also offered to retrofit, only waiting for 1979 to arrive [so that Dr. U.V. Helava's 19 year US patent in analytical photogrammetry expired...Helava was also Canadian].

Then they abruptly dropped the retrofit offerings because they were releasing their own Analytical Stereo Plotter the next year at ISPRS Congress. They had also dropped support of money-paid retrofit clients. 😡

[Back then, systems like this run on refrigerator-size mini-computers. PC didn't exist.]

We reared our ugly head because the 286 and 386 had arrived and powerful enough; PC-based CAD software in a box had also become commercially available. Even Intergraph could say nothing because we interfaced our mechanics to Bentley MicroStation [rival of AutoCad], which they had garnered exclusive distribution rights...but customers simply buy their own software box, from dealers if they must. 😀

In fact, our initial success was due to Intergraph sales staff unofficially off-loading their own customers to us, saving red faces. Intergraph was planning also to enter the Analytical Stereo Plotter market and already in advanced discussion with U.S. Defense Mapping Agency...

The situation today is exactly the same. Leica had gone to the point of no return, the M8/9 investment is too large to retard.

Leica had also dropped the M8 upgrade program. Another RFF thread [in M8/8.2/9] had started discussing class-action suit.

AND, Herr Kaufmann will never chase after Ernst Leitz's dead bodies.

Leica [or Leica Heerbrugg then] cannot criticize my dM-retrofit's RF/patch, shutter, body, lens...they built them all; nor could Leica experts in these forums.

Zeiss will never retrofit Leica products. If they did anything, it would be a ZMd.

Cosina couldn't play this game, likely because of unpublicized contract protocols with Zeiss [Kobayashi-San is said to dislike digital perhaps only to save face...because he couldn't say yes, even if he had proven he could by building the R-D1. His people got to do new Zeiss work and eat].

The only thing we have to be sure of is indeed package robustness; and nothing beats solid-state flexible circuitry linking from battery to SD writer.

Mil. Spec. all the way.

Make it sturdy and keep it simple...stupid.
 
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Back to the project. The Kodak backs used the Sync pulse from the Data Back interface to activate the CCD and to pass information for ISO setting and shutter settings.

The mechanical Leica's have the Flash Sync Socket, which is a mechanical switch. The onboard processor for the Digital back will have to use this flash-port for a Sync pulse. The alternative would require modifying the camera, which I do not think is necessary. Two or more Photodiodes could be fixed at the film gate to detect the shutter opening and closing, in addition to the Flash Sync.
 
Brian Sweeney said:
I'll have to read up on the new open-source image file formats. I suspect "NATO standard Image Format" is out. That is what we used in the early 1980s for a Digital Infrared Sensor that we built.
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DNG is actually pretty easy to work with - it's just an extension to TIFF with lots of extra specifications for representing transformations in metadata. As long as you have a well-defined set of transformations done by your imaging processor, putting things in DNG is not much of a problem.

I just took a brief look at the NSIF spec sheet, reads like a piece from a different era 🙂
 
Mil. Spec. all the way.

Make it sturdy and keep it simple...stupid.
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Exactly what I hope for!

Back in the late eighties I was doing radio/telephone comms in the army, way up north close to the russians. Everything was mil spec, and that makes for systems that can take a real beating! No problem setting up in the snow, or half-way into water - only problem sometimes was static.

I would choose this even over an M9, it if was FF and at the same price point... Or over another M8 if it was a crop - simply because it would be something that lasts and can take a beating!
 
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rxmd said:
DNG is actually pretty easy to work with - it's just an extension to TIFF with lots of extra specifications for representing transformations in metadata. As long as you have a well-defined set of transformations done by your imaging processor, putting things in DNG is not much of a problem.

I just took a brief look at the NSIF spec sheet, reads like a piece from a different era 🙂
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In our industry, we had to deal with all sorts of weird image formats, from TIFF, geoTIFF, DiAP.sjs to COT... in stereo and geo-referenced. Sorta couple grades above Google or Bing.

Taming the likes of DNG is the kind of things we handle routinely.

I am now waiting for a sermon from the Leica high priests. If it soon came and against it, then the project is doable. 😛
 
Which Mil-Spec? The number "Milspec 810-E" popped into my brain from 10 years back. It would be hard to pass the vibration spec with a databack interfaced with a 50 year old mechanical camera.

As far as development time: using an existing Sensor with a development kit available off-the-shelf, developing firmware that pulls data off the Sensor and stores in a Raw format using a well-specified standard, external software for color conversion, developing and fabricating a custom circuit board for the operation, simple user-interface (read no LCD menu system and playback), and shutter/sync circuit for measuring the shutter speed in realtime, and mechanical package for the CCD/Custom Electronics/etc-

I would guess 9 months from start of project. Add in an LCD screen, more firmware to develop. I would worry about noise sources, additional isolation, power drain, and firmware complexity to support the LCD. Feedback on the LCD screens are for wimps anyway.

Developing the custom microlens and thin IR absorbing glass had to take a lot of time. You can trade high-ISO performance for the lack of optimal microlenses. Apply a non-uniformity correction for the wide-angle lenses used, basically drag down the intensity of the center of the Sensor to that of the edge pixels. With this in mind, it would be easy to select a line of of sensors with monochrome and color available in the same package.

It would be a lot like a DCS camera back- but for a Leica.

I had a lot of fun in the 1980s.
 
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Brian read my mind.

I am only thinking mil-spec parts at the moment...not whole system just yet.

Indeed, the whole idea is like a DCS back for a Leica M...and little more.

In taming pixel vignetting, a simple digital anti-vignetting filter equivalent is all..."Apply a non-uniformity correction for the wide-angle lenses used, basically drag down the intensity of the center of the Sensor to that of the edge pixels." If we can source a CCD with enough head room.

No LCD except a plug for external LCD later..."Feedback on the LCD screens are for wimps anyway." 😀
 
You have no idea how hard it is to work in an optics lab (31 years this month), have the computer, optical, and mechanical engineers work for you, and NOT MISUSE funds to develop your Baby. But I did think about the design.
 
You should have gotten you colleagues in on the plot! 😉

9 months, would that be 1-2-3 persons working full time? Or part time, but every week? If too many hours are requested, it somehow leaves the stage of getting done in a small work-shop...?

Anyway, if it takes longer it would not matter too much for the buyers of something like this. No one would buy it to get cutting-edge, new technology - people would buy it as a replacement ´film´ - and then compare it to film. I am very happy with my M8 as it comes out much better than colour slides or negs, and it gives me files I quite likely never will have any real needs to improve. The only thing is high iso - but then again that is compared to digital, not film.

If using standard parts, would it not also be easy to upgrade this with a new sensor later down? Almost no need to disassemble, and if planned for this would be possible to do with the same mainboard?
 
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