Minolta 35mm to digital conversion

May 12, 2006 @ 6:41PM

Minolta 35mm to digital conversion

By Haje Jan Kamps

I think this write-up by GPS aware is most likely to be a joke (the quality of the pictures doesn’t inspire much faith, anyway), but it seems to be a funny project anyway. It re-opens the ages-old discussion of “So, I have a great 35mm camera, why can’t I convert it into a digital camera?”.

There are, of course, commercial products available that will help you out, called Digital Backs, such as this one for Mamiya medium formats, and the legendary Phase One backs for Hasselblads, etc. These products will cost enough money that you could put down a deposit for a house and buy a car for the same money, and is therefore largely limited to commercial (advertising) photographers.

On the cheap, you are looking for a different approach. Such as GPS Aware, who took a broken Minolta and stuck a webcam to it.

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Comments

Anonymous

5 years ago

funny idea.
there’s also this uncommon but apparently still available Silicon Film technology. i just re-encountered it for the first time after hearing about it about 5 years ago (when it was called E-Film. http://www.side.com/

Anonymous

5 years ago

my old slr is heaver and slower than my cheap-0 pentax. but i do have an minolta that i miss.

Anonymous

4 years ago

Believe it or not, Phase One Digital backs are not as expesive as buying a mortgage for a house. The P20 is available for $7K which is just about the same price as a high-end DSLR. Also, there are refurbished units that are even less expensive.

Anonymous

3 years ago

Major camera manufacturers while making DC’s are fully available at the same time to supply digital backs to their good and legacy film camera. But they don’t simply because E-film backs would defeat their DC marketing plans!

Unfortunately I do not have the resources required, else I would produce generic E-film backs for all classic major 35MM cameras. Any deep-pocket investors out there? drop me a line, please!

Vic
(a patent holder of something else that has consumed all my pennies).

Anonymous

3 years ago

Has anyone found a link or know someone that has taken a cheap digital point and shoot and an old half-frame 35mm body and merged them together? I’m considering doing this myself, wanted to see if anyone has given it a shot.

Anonymous

3 years ago

Tom
That is a good idea. Provided you could make it light tight and have the same focus plane it would be a hoot. Did you have any luck? I have an old canon digital and an even older praktica i bought in Berlin before 1983.

Anonymous

2 years ago

I’ld like to try that .. but with a rollei 35

Anonymous

1 year ago

@tom
@Baz

The issue you would have here is that the size of the CCD on the PnS would be only a fraction of the size required for a 35mm.

35mm (actually 135mm) has a surface area of 864mm^2 per frame. Most low end PnS cameras have sensor somewhere around 25mm^2.

Besides the obvious difference in size, there are secondary considerations such as noise (in low light) and flares (in extreme light) that the larger CCDs do not suffer as badly.

That is why DSLRs have much larger CCDs – and the larger CCD is the greatest factor in price.

mansoor

9 months ago

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