Open EOS: A free, universal, and "open" camera

[john_van_v]

Note: I have posted these ideas on a Linux blog, the Linux Society: http://linux-society.blogspot.com/

Thanks everyone for your input!!

My "Open EOS," or OpenEOS, idea started when I looked carefully in side my newly bought used Canon XT; the mirror is very small and set back. Furthermore, it seems that the lens mounting is artificially held outward by some hollow plastic. I was aware that Argus lenses had been set inside an EOS using the body cap as a mounting base, and I wondered if this plastic extender could be removed to help with adapting lenses built to shorter register standards. Since we are mostly using APS-sized sensors at this point the mounting on an EOS can be brought close to the sensor, and the register size can be lower. That would allow adapter manufacturers to accommodate old Canon, Hexanon, and other small register mounts, and possibly old school rangefinder lenses. We could re-start the Soviet camera era!

By extending the free software ideas, such as with GNU/Linux, I realized further that a camera could be built to accomodate this body modification in the public domain (or more accurately, the protected public domain of open licensing). The reason I thought of this is that I have had extensive experience with public domain software such as the Linux and L4 operating systems. These systems can be adapted to work inside a Canon in the same way Canon's DryOS works. Prior to DryOS, Canon I believe that used a Unix variant called VxWorks. It so happens that VxWorks is used in common consumer wireless routers, where Linux had been previously used, and often Linux is reinstalled into VxWorks powered routers; so equipping a Canon EOS with Linux should be a snap.

Or we could just go with a rangefinder configuration, such as with the Sigma full sensor point and shoot, which is fixed-lens--unfortunately fixed to a maximum aperture opening of f4. And we can even go back to film and manual shutter as well, but with electronic timing. Then moving the concept forward again, we can bring the fully manual shutter release to the digital SLR--all from the same chassis. This is something I have discussed (1 ,2 ), and debated, extensively. Various mounting adapters would fill the gaps in this scenario.

I personally find the EOS "desktop" confusing; but I like Kodak's point and shoot controls on my modest c875. An OpenEOS would allow for any interface to be developed, and it could be developed quickly. I could accommodate any style and allow for fully new concepts; it could even allow for a standard desktop from which you could browse the web, and send email--with wifi of course.

 

[kully]

Isn't the 4/3 system 'open'?

 

[bmattock]

Isn't the 4/3 system 'open'?

Open for licensees. Like Sony's BetaMax, I think. Not free as in beer.

 

[john_van_v]

Open for licensees. Like Sony's BetaMax, I think. Not free as in beer.

Hahahaha 😛 You know Stallman.

I have had a lot of emails with Richard Stallman, or RMS, (M for Milhous?), and I think he is a socialist if not a communist. I am for the family, community, and individual in the most traditional sense--the early villages and small cities: constructivist.

This is a great topic to discuss, especially with "(gnu|new)bies," where "noobs" is simply bias and an insult. What is great about newbies is that they, or you, are still un-jaded.

Let me clarify "open" for you from my technical POV (point of view). Open means freely available to the public as all resources were before the "annexation" of massive tracts of land by the rich to create their estates.

When the rich took all that land, they took the people living on the land as serfs. The same happened in the US when lawyers in Philly drew lines on maps of Pennsylvania to "stake" their estates, and forced the inhabitants to buy their own land. That led to the Whiskey Rebellion, one of the real US revolutions. (I believe, BTW, that we here typing into these text areas are a bonafide revolution.)

This created what is thought of by the highly successful families as property; the highly successful of the industrialized extended this strategy of "annexation," or capturing, to "intellectual property," and hence the WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization. These are the people who along with the RIAA attack grandmas whose grandchildren are sharing MP3 audio files through Limewire.

OK, so showing how this is all somewhat greedy, and ultimately inefficient, many corporations have adopted what is called "open source" or have even embraced what I call the "protected public domain" of GNU, which was created by Richard Stallman.

Much great stuff has simply sprouted from the "open community" such as this text area, or web wysiwyg written in JavaScript: TinyMCE. It is free and you can work on it if you please, and submit code, and you can make buxx$$$ with it too, like RF forum does: a perfect world.

I am proposing applying these ideas to the EOS. EOS does not own the mounting interfaces; if they did we would have no M42 adapters. They do own their EOS designs and DryOS.

If they have the sense I hope they have, they will at least consider an open arrangement where people can enhance Canons with new software just as Linksys allows people to enhance their blue WiFi routers.

If not, well, why not go it alone? It makes market sense to use their mountings since they are effective and common, though a bit far from the focal plane, and possibly some of their equipment--retooling camera bodies for instance.

My dream would be to have the digital guts inside a 35mm roll, with the sensor attached were the film usually is and a wire between them. Or perhaps new backs for old favorites, like the Nikon FM.

But even better would be a highly adapatable chassis that could be either RF or SLR. Cosina does that with their Voigtlanders. The new Bessamatic with the curved prism front, which is also sold as the Powermaster (?!), is the same as the Bessa R when looked from the bottom up! (I own both, the Powermaster is broken.)

So I will leave you with that since I don't want to be overwhelming, especially the Cosina example showing that RF and SLR are not necessarily that far apart.

Thanks for responding.

Oh, on the topic of 4/3rds, I would promote a full-sized sensor, since my APS-sized Canon XT isn't holding its own against film for what I need it for, low-light nature photography. But then maybe 4/3rds would be a good place to use all the Egleet and Bolex 16mm lenses.

~~John

 

[CK Dexter Haven]

Or we could just go with a rangefinder configuration, such as with the Sigma full sensor point and shoot, which is fixed-lens--unfortunately fixed to a maximum aperture opening of f4.

The Sigma DP1/DP2 isn't "full-frame" sensor, if that's what you mean. It's sort of an APS-C thing, isn't it? Technically, every digital is a "full sensor" camera.

If only. I figure we should only have to wait another year or two before someone puts a full-frame sensor into a truly pocketable P&S....

But, that's off-topic....

 

[kully]

Who's Stallman?

If you want a free, open-source format why not propose one? Why do Canon need to open up their format? You can buy sensors from Kodak and order up the rest from CNC workshops.

The problem with comparing hardware with code is that I can code on my little laptop, any new functionality/enhancement is easily folded back into MAIN and everyone can make use of whatever I've added.

If you design some cool new hardware change... what happens to all those people with the previous hardware?

This seems to recreate the technology rush we are seeing from Canon/Nikon &c. But without all the money & equipment they have.

 

[john_van_v]

The Sigma DP1/DP2 isn't "full-frame" sensor, if that's what you mean. It's sort of an APS-C thing, isn't it?

Good to know. I call it the "Sigma enigma." From 1983 until two years ago, I used Minolta x-700 with a Sigma 35-70. It was a perfect world; I took great pictures. I tried some Nikon stuff but the Sigma was better, only my Nikkor f1.2 was added, but the Cosina Nikon FM-10 that I bought with it broke (ruining much great film on a long trip), and the f1.2 sat still until I got a real FM.

The Sigma zoom got condensation on the inside, and I have tried to replace it with the same in OM mount, and have failed, none of them hold up to the original, especially for color. I use a MIJ 35-70 zoom now. Why Sigma can't keep up its quality, and general smarts all around is a great mystery to me.

If Sigma's fancy point and shoot had been released with the allowance for Leica or Contax RF mounts, wouldn't you get one? I have read that the Sigma sensor is better with respect to color than the others, though that info may be obsolete.

My point is that we can have that, and lots more, by opening the EOS, and as it happens Cosina is perfectly positioned to do so. But do they have the smarts and nerve? Would Canon go for it, could they collaborate? Maybe, maybe not. There may be a socio- and psychological issues preventing that.

 

[bmattock]

The RAW format is being addressed as an open source alternative:

http://www.openraw.org/

Birger Engineering has an open source EOS mount, if I am not mistaken, for RED cameras.

http://www.birger.com/

Probably not what you had in mind, but at least it exists.

The biggest problem with open source software versus open source hardware is that software is labor intensive but not material sensitive. Therefore, fanatics can donate their time freely as they wish. As the saying often goes - I have more 'time than money' and therefore I cannot donate to nor create infrastructure and hardware freely.

Hacking existing hardware is an entirely different proposition, of course. And we do see that, though generally handled as private enterprise. A prime example would be the various lens mounts that have been retrofitted to the Sigma SD14 by Luis Guevara.

http://www.sigmacumlaude.com/

Another example would be the teams that have 'hacked' the firmware in various Canon point-and-shoot digital cameras to enable extra features such as RAW recording and so on, as well as those who assiduously 'unlock' cell phones as soon as they hit the market.

I could well imagine an open source team going after a particular platform with the goal of reverse-engineering and redesigning the hardware, including mounts, menus, and electrical controls to fit a more 'open source' model. I would have trouble believing one could be created from scratch.

 

[bmattock]

My point is that we can have that, and lots more, by opening the EOS, and as it happens Cosina is perfectly positioned to do so. But do they have the smarts and nerve? Would Canon go for it, could they collaborate? Maybe, maybe not. There may be a socio- and psychological issues preventing that.

As to Cosina - their CEO has stated repeatedly that he has zero interest in producing a digital SLR camera, and their one foray into digital was the Epson RD-1, notably a 'success' but it seems nearly everyone had technical issues with the cameras. He just doesn't want to do it. We have these discussions here every so often about how he 'ought to' do it, but the fact remains - he doesn't want to. It's his company.

As to collaboration - as you see from the attempts to create an open source RAW file format - everybody nods their heads, nobody wants to play along.

 

[john_van_v]

Who's Stallman?
​

Richard Stallman invented the free software concept as it is used today--usually called "open source" which is actually a misnomer. Stallman will tell you that open source is a diluted version of his model, the GNU public licenses, what I call the protected public domain. His model attempts to force a pure sharing model, where modifications are "re-seeded" back into the field, making them available for other programmers, especially those who created the code concepts.

If you want a free, open-source format why not propose one? Why do Canon need to open up their format? You can buy sensors from Kodak and order up the rest from CNC workshops.
​

History has shown that it works best if it "liberates" the proprietary software that is already being used. Stallman "liberated" Unix software to create the top-end of the Linux system; the bottom end, the Linux Kernel was written independently by Linux Trovolds, and merged with the top end, and then joined socially by becoming GNU/Linux.

Linux could replace DryOS, but I think L4, the advanced "micro kernel" would be a better platform to develop.

The problem with comparing hardware with code is that I can code on my little laptop, any new functionality/enhancement is easily folded back into MAIN and everyone can make use of whatever I've added.
​

To apply your understanding of free software to hardware, think of the IBM desktop computer; it was the first open hardware design, and look now, even your laptop is build from the original IBM specifications--it was developed back in early 80s! The desktop is so "compliant" that anyone can see the similarity. Open IS the way to go if you want design efficacy.

If you design some cool new hardware change... what happens to all those people with the previous hardware?

By keeping the design open, you naturally support "legacy" hardware, that has been the nature of the beast. Right now Linux is actually dumping some VERY old support, but that is being challenged by the free software community. Damn Small Linux, or DSL, is keeping the legacy flames alive. With a true microkernal such as L4, that would not be a problem because of its nearly purely modularized nature. Also, software can be created now that will survive for a century or more, in fact the older software, such as on early IBM mainframes, is better because it was written for less powerful machines. An even better example is the old LISP language that can fit on a legacy floppy.

This seems to recreate the technology rush we are seeing from Canon/Nikon &c. But without all the money & equipment they have.
​

Also a good point! This is the reality of the business beast: 90% of business expenses fall to purely "parasitic" expenses: rent, parking, payroll taxes, paper clips, lawyer fees, executive bonuses--you get the picture. Health insurance is a big expense--that most governments cover.

It is actually easier to demonstrate this "parasitic" effect by looking at higher education. 99% of college is spent on things other than professor salaries; the greatest teachers, Plato, Aristotle, the Buddha, Hippocrities all taught under a tree (not the same tree). It is presently being proved that the old one-room school house gave a far better education than the huge faceless monsters of today's centralized districts do. Small low-expense operations where "information" is shared, as in the mutualist model of the Information Society are the most efficient.

The "open source," or free software e-mutulaist movement is even more efficient as it uses e-mutualism, which is the extension of the concept of mutualism, which is an accepted evolutionary conceptualization for a emotional collaboration.

To extend this point a little into the business sphere, As it happens, it is small business that recovers broken economies; small business creates all the new jobs; it certainly creates all the new technology--big business just annexes it and makes us pay for it, for the most part. I am not sure what big business does that I need to be thankful for.

 

[john_van_v]

Hacking existing hardware is an entirely different proposition, of course. And we do see that, though generally handled as private enterprise. A prime example would be the various lens mounts that have been retrofitted to the Sigma SD14 by Luis Guevara.

http://www.sigmacumlaude.com/

Wow, thanks for all the links.

This one is the best; real color from these Sigmas, obviously not doctored -- adding to the "Sigma enigma."

Here is a link from there: http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/LUIS+A+GUEVARA/

I bought a 300mm Sigma zoom for a new Sigma film or digital that was for sale in the Canon category w/o reading the fine print ("we don't really know what it goes to but..")

A Canon user tried to buy it from me through Amazon, but I wouldn't sell it to her of course--no matter how hard she tried to buy it.

I looked over the Zuiko 4/3rds stuff, and the pictures are not all that impressive, even of really sexy Russian women. Maybe if someone hacked a C mount into an Olympus to use Elgeet or Raptar Cine lenses, we could see some interesting pictures.

 

[bmattock]

I bought a 300mm Sigma zoom for a new Sigma film or digital that was for sale in the Canon category w/o reading the fine print ("we don't really know what it goes to but..")

For what it may be worth, Cameta Camera in Amityville, NY is selling Sigma SD14 bodies new in box with full warranty for $349 now. I just bought one. They were something like $1499 last year. The SD15 is due out shortly, I guess. That would take your SA mount lens.

I looked over the Zuiko 4/3rds stuff, and the pictures are not all that impressive, even of really sexy Russian women. Maybe if someone hacked a C mount into an Olympus to use Elgeet or Raptar Cine lenses, we could see some interesting pictures.

Check out the thread on the micro-4/3 cameras. It has a very short flange-to-sensor distance, and the same 4/3 sensor, so they're making all sorts of adapters for it now. Just today someone said c-mount is up next. It does not have a penta-prism or mirror, though - EVF, but with the SLR removable lens. I'm intrigued, but I'll have to get my hands on one and see how well it can be manually focused. Some people say it can be, some say no, but in the end it does not matter who says what - if I can, then I can and if I can't then I'm not going to be interested. We'll see.

 

[john_van_v]

EVF, [electronic, or digital, viewfinder], but with the SLR removable lens. I'm intrigued, but I'll have to get my hands on one and see how well it can be manually focused. Some people say it can be, some say no, but in the end it does not matter who says what - if I can, then I can and if I can't then I'm not going to be interested. We'll see.

My guess is that it will not be that great from experience with digital. They will say it is.

The "Yeah sayers" will agree, and will "Nay say" film for the umpteenth time saying the market has decided (actually the market is collapsing), and will take crap pictures such as of their wives acting slutty and post them to Flickr...

How is it that they sell these obscenely expensive cameras in a collapsing market? It must be the people who are sucking down all the resources that are buying these cameras, and posting the endless sucky pictures that we see on Flickr.

I did read much of the thread, and concurred with 40oz. There is no mention of exactly how a smaller sensor is better, except that it is smaller: the circuitous logic of sales victims.

 

[bmattock]

My guess is that it will not be that great from experience with digital. They will say it is.

The "Yeah sayers" will agree, and will "Nay say" film for the umpteenth time saying the market has decided (actually the market is collapsing), and will take crap pictures such as of their wives acting slutty and post them to Flickr...

How is it that they sell these obscenely expensive cameras in a collapsing market? It must be the people who are sucking down all the resources that are buying these cameras, and posting the endless sucky pictures that we see on Flickr.

I did read much of the thread, and concurred with 40oz. There is no mention of exactly how a smaller sensor is better, except that it is smaller: the circuitous logic of sales victims.

I've been reading your statements with increasingly raised eyebrows and more than a little trepidation. Aside from having an understanding of open-source software and knowing who Richard Stallman is, and having an understanding of Linux/Minix/Coherent/System 7/Plan 9/OS9 and various other interesting technology, I don't think we have that much in common.

My statement regarding the EVF of the Lumix G1 was non-ambiguous and referred only to my own ability to either focus it manually or not.

 

[john_van_v]

Note: I have posted these ideas on a Linux blog, the Linux Society: http://linux-society.blogspot.com/

Thanks everyone for your input!!