leica M digital conversion... thoughts

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triplefinger

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I haven't yet had coffee this morning, so forgive me if this is all ridiculous.

what if you took the "garage door" off the back of an M camera, which is where the film plane is, and slapped on a sensor in its place. maybe it would be bulky and a little ugly, but... would it work?

it could even have it's own set of controls

thoughts??
 
Hey, if you could light-seal a MF digital back to the camera and somehow convince it to actuate with the press of the shutter button it should seem to work. Bulky yes, slow, yes, workable, yes.

Huw (over on photo.net) tried to convert an M2 to digital while keeping everything within the camera body. It was supposed to be shown on April 1 of last year and nobody has heard from him since the middle of last March.
 
Yes, I wish that someone would create a digital back for the Leica M's. The concept might be to stick the battery into the film chamber, have the whole thing insert from the bottom and replace the back film flap with the sensor.

Something clever might be needed to cycle the electronics, but how hard can that really be?

And the dust ergonomics will be complicated to deal with.

...Vick
 
Several years ago, a company attempted to make something like that: a roughly film-shaped combination of sensor and memory and battery. It suffered from several problems, the ones I remember are that resolution was lagging behind what was then currently available in a truly digital camera and more importantly, problems in compatibility. As it transpires, you needed a slightly different version of the thing for each camera - especially the more electronic ones get confused if they don't 'feel' film. This makes mass-production difficult, so projected costs were high etc. I don't think it ever made it to the market and the company just disappeared.

See these for names:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0001/00010604siliconfilm.asp
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0102/01021404pma04.asp#siliconfilm

Doctor Zero
 
who would want to do it??

well, i suppose that depends on the price. if a reasonable digital back for an M was available for let's say, less that that of an R-D1.

I think it would be more marketable than both the m8 & r-d1 due to the amount of M cameras out there...even at a $2000 price tag.

make it like a grip that's already sold for the m camera.

Leica, Cosina, Tom A., Steve Gandy... are you listening??



stric said:
It's doable but then who wants to develop such a system? It'd be nice if Leica would do it but it appears that they are now focused more on M8.
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I think it's a good idea. Like the DMR, but a DM...M.

It could even use one of those nice monochrome sensors for B&W, so you could use color filters in front of lens like with B&W film.
 
Clearly all the required digital guts fit into an M body--the M8 proves that. Maybe a digital back would be a little bulkier, like adding the Motor-M or a Leicavit. It would allow the legions of collectors and fanciers to shoot the M body of their choice by swapping the digital back from one to the other. Leica did the same thing with the R, except there are very few collectors/fanciers of R equipment so it was really a waste--and has been discontinued. It looks like another example of Leica being out of tune with what their major market would go for, which happened frequently over the years.

Still, FWIW I haven't seen any evidence yet that Leica has a firm grasp on digital (a camera capable of great resolution and sharpness, but that requires add-on filters and shuts itself off without warning is not "firm grasp" to me), so I'll be happy to continue shooting my Leicas with film, and use Canon whenever I happen to want to shoot digital.
 
The R8/9 has a lot of contacts to interface the camera with the digital back, although made for motordrive and databack they can be used to control the sensor and support electronics.

One could use just the flash sync to trigger the digital guts of the camera as we see in Hassy 500 and LF cameras with digital backs, but I think that's not an elegant solution.
 
>Leica, Cosina, Tom A., Steve Gandy... are you listening??

I'm listening. Let's do it.

There has to be enough collective brain power within the RFf community.

I know for a fact that some people here have already started doing some research.

Sure it is impossible but so were lots and lots other things until someone did it.
 
Huw (over on photo.net) tried to convert an M2 to digital while keeping everything within the camera body. It was supposed to be shown on April 1 of last year and nobody has heard from him since the middle of last March.
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Last I heard, Leica had found out about Huw's project, bought the rights, and then slapped a non-disclosure clause on the whole shooting match. Seemed Huw's project was turning out better pictures than the M8 LOL!
 
Jungle Jim said:
Last I heard, Leica had found out about Huw's project, bought the rights, and then slapped a non-disclosure clause on the whole shooting match. Seemed Huw's project was turning out better pictures than the M8 LOL!
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Satire, I assume?
 
if the really had something like a digital slap on thing for an m film camera that I could use without mangling the camera to death, I would buy it in a heart beat, but then again its never going to happen
 
Me, I want to know if it's possible to take an M8, lift the LCD, open the bottom, take out all the guts, put tuem in my shirt pocket, then inseft a Tri-X and shoot away?
 
I can't see it at Leica prices but I do wonder if CV couldn't fit a sensor, basic electronics, SD card and battery into the Bessa body. Forget the screen and all the bells and whistles (except for ISO selector and exposure count), essentially just replace film with SD card/sensor combination with everything else being done in the pc..

shouldn't be any bulkier than the current Bessas.
 
mike_j said:
I can't see it at Leica prices but I do wonder if CV couldn't fit a sensor, basic electronics, SD card and battery into the Bessa body. Forget the screen and all the bells and whistles (except for ISO selector and exposure count), essentially just replace film with SD card/sensor combination with everything else being done in the pc..

shouldn't be any bulkier than the current Bessas.
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Mike,

They did - with Epson.
 
Some of this was discussed on another recent thread. Plugging into the x-xync could be used to trigger the digital capture, since x-sync is triggered by the opening shutter curtain.
 
Gid said:
Mike,

They did - with Epson.
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Well yes and no. they still had the screen and most of the bells and whistles and treble the film price - I was thinking of a rally minimalist approach.
 
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