omaroo
June 19th, 2007, 10:15 AM
Hi all
After musing over a photo of the Pentax film body with the webcam PCB mounted inside shown below, I've been thinking of doing the same to my Nikon N50 - which I will probably never use again as a day to day unit as I still have two other film bodies that are far more valuable to me (Nikon F and Nikon EL) and now the D40 DSLR. I paid $50 for it on eBay so it's absolutely perfect for the job. It still mounts all my Nikon lenses - which is why I'm interested.
After getting involved in my peltier-cooled webcam project I think I'd also like to try doing the film-CCD conversion on the N50 as a bit of fun. It looks relatively easy to mount the webcam PCB with the CCD still mounted where it should be right on the film plane from the back. If I remove the film pressure 'sled' then it would leave plenty of room for the board.
Now - what would I end up with? Do the camera's electronics become irrelevant just because I'm exposing to CCD rather than film? I guess so as the webcam isn't designed to be exposed for a brief time, but rather outputs a constant video stream. What if I were to perform a long exposure mod on the webcam - would it work the way intended then as the shot would trigger the mirror to flip and the shutter to open - exposing the CCD for a brief time?
The N50 doesn't have mirror lock-up, but it does have a bulb setting - so normal video streaming mode would work if this were set. I've just tried it and the mirror stays up with the shutter open until I re-press the shutter button.
The bulb feature works to keep the mirror up and the shutter open - and once I replace the battery with an externally-wired 6v DC source power shouldn't be a problem. At this stage I don't plan to use the timed shutter - but to just keep it open so that the webcam can operate as a normal streaming video device to capture moon or planets - only with a nice Nikon lens up front.
I don't plan to actually remove anything as such - it's purely a mechanical job to mount the CCD and board on the film plane with very minor modification. There's even four beautifully-placed screws on the backplane that will aid in mounting the board. I'd have to remove the little speaker from the webcam's PCB - but that's a no brainer as it serves no purpose anyway.
The question I have is what reaching focus will be like - as the focal plane is in the same place - the only difference being the size of the sensor in comparison to the size of a 35mm frame. I hope that I can center the CCD to picj up a 640x480 pixel "window" within the 35mm frame.
Any ideas anyone?
Cheers
Chris
The Pentax (from "Digital Astrophotography: The State of the Art" by David Ratledge (Ed) from Patrick Moore's Practical Astronomy Series, published by Springer)
http://www.omaroo.net/albums/album34/Pentax_ToUcam.jpg
The Nikon N50 - nice and cheap on eBay!
http://www.omaroo.net/albums/album34/NikonF50aAdorma.jpg
http://www.omaroo.net/albums/album34/DSC_0615.sized.jpg
http://www.omaroo.net/albums/album34/DSC_0619.sized.jpg
http://www.omaroo.net/albums/album34/DSC_0621.sized.jpg
After musing over a photo of the Pentax film body with the webcam PCB mounted inside shown below, I've been thinking of doing the same to my Nikon N50 - which I will probably never use again as a day to day unit as I still have two other film bodies that are far more valuable to me (Nikon F and Nikon EL) and now the D40 DSLR. I paid $50 for it on eBay so it's absolutely perfect for the job. It still mounts all my Nikon lenses - which is why I'm interested.
After getting involved in my peltier-cooled webcam project I think I'd also like to try doing the film-CCD conversion on the N50 as a bit of fun. It looks relatively easy to mount the webcam PCB with the CCD still mounted where it should be right on the film plane from the back. If I remove the film pressure 'sled' then it would leave plenty of room for the board.
Now - what would I end up with? Do the camera's electronics become irrelevant just because I'm exposing to CCD rather than film? I guess so as the webcam isn't designed to be exposed for a brief time, but rather outputs a constant video stream. What if I were to perform a long exposure mod on the webcam - would it work the way intended then as the shot would trigger the mirror to flip and the shutter to open - exposing the CCD for a brief time?
The N50 doesn't have mirror lock-up, but it does have a bulb setting - so normal video streaming mode would work if this were set. I've just tried it and the mirror stays up with the shutter open until I re-press the shutter button.
The bulb feature works to keep the mirror up and the shutter open - and once I replace the battery with an externally-wired 6v DC source power shouldn't be a problem. At this stage I don't plan to use the timed shutter - but to just keep it open so that the webcam can operate as a normal streaming video device to capture moon or planets - only with a nice Nikon lens up front.
I don't plan to actually remove anything as such - it's purely a mechanical job to mount the CCD and board on the film plane with very minor modification. There's even four beautifully-placed screws on the backplane that will aid in mounting the board. I'd have to remove the little speaker from the webcam's PCB - but that's a no brainer as it serves no purpose anyway.
The question I have is what reaching focus will be like - as the focal plane is in the same place - the only difference being the size of the sensor in comparison to the size of a 35mm frame. I hope that I can center the CCD to picj up a 640x480 pixel "window" within the 35mm frame.
Any ideas anyone?
Cheers
Chris
The Pentax (from "Digital Astrophotography: The State of the Art" by David Ratledge (Ed) from Patrick Moore's Practical Astronomy Series, published by Springer)
http://www.omaroo.net/albums/album34/Pentax_ToUcam.jpg
The Nikon N50 - nice and cheap on eBay!
http://www.omaroo.net/albums/album34/NikonF50aAdorma.jpg
http://www.omaroo.net/albums/album34/DSC_0615.sized.jpg
http://www.omaroo.net/albums/album34/DSC_0619.sized.jpg
http://www.omaroo.net/albums/album34/DSC_0621.sized.jpg