I just had an idea after seeing something in the Make blog about re-using antique lenses with new cameras. I’m not linking to it. I can’t even believe they took apart such a beautiful old Zeiss. Nicole had one that she got in Germany, but alas, it got “lost” in the mail. Anyway, I think it might be better to go about this in the other direction.
The Zeiss and a lot of other old cameras use medium format film. The film is 6 cm wide and the part exposed by the camera can be 4.5 cm or 6 or some other sizes. This means that any medium format camera can fit in a thin addition of 4.5 x 6cm or larger. So instead of taking apart a beautiful old film camera, why not disassemble a digital camera?
My first thoughts on how to do this are that I would want to avoid modifying the holding camera. So in order to signal to my digital module that it’s time to take a picture, I would use a light sensor as a switch. The shutter opens, the sensor says, “ooh, light!” and snaps a photo.
That doesn’t leave much time for light metering inside the electronic bits. Would this work as a DIY project?
I bet somebody already did this. I just stumbled across a whole bunch of stuff at bamboo cargo bikes tonight. Duuuude, I totally wanted to do that.
You could solve the “no time to meter” problem by making sure the camera is in bulb mode, which allows you to open the shutter for as long as you want. You’d just need to estimate how long to hold open the shutter. If the digital bits take a photo like normal, you’d be able to avoid camera shake problems.