Hello, I am an absolute beginner with Arduino and electronics. I have Arduino for a few years now still looking for a meaningful project to put it to work/
I have a Hasselblad 500cm medium format film camera. I want to make a digital conversion adapter for it such attached...
I know I will have to acquire a big light sensor, is it same sensor as in older digital cameras? there is a few in my local thrift store. I think I will have to calibrate the timing so that the sensor correctly capture the full-frame.
as it seems it's not done before, is this a viable project for a beginner? how difficult on a scale 1 to 5? any concerns for coding and components for such project? any similar project I can reference with links?
But, I agree... Not a beginner project. Even an expert hobbyist probably can't build something as good as an inexpensive digital camera. Given enough time, I could probably build something that gets some kind of image under certain limited-controlled lighting & focus-distance conditions.
The physical assembly/soldering is probably beyond what you can do "by hand at home".
I think you'd have to use DMA (direct memory access) and you'd need additional memory. Reading/writing pixel-by-pixel through the Arduino would be too slow (unless you're doing long-exposure of still objects and the Arduino doesn't have enough built-in memory to hold an image (with any reasonable resolution).
I know I will have to acquire a big light sensor
The size & resolution is up to you, depending on what you can find, and possibly on your budget. You're probably not going to find one the same size as the film so you'll have to "adapt" the focus/optics.
is it same sensor as in older digital cameras? there is a few in my local thrift store.
Same as what? Of course there are multiple suppliers and multiple different parts from each supplier. The challenges would be identifying the part (it's not going to be stamped on it, like a regular IC) so you can fine (or try to find) the manufacturer's datasheet, and then removing the part without damaging it.
Oh, such things were done and marketed way back when CCDs were first invented. The CCD's were several inches square to get a few thousand pixels.Several companies made adapters for all kinds of cameras. Then reality struck in the form of cheap digital cameras and the adapters disappeared. I think Intel had one for a few months.
If you really want to do this, you will need lenses to reduce the image to about 0.5 inches square, which you will find in one of the used cameras you reference. By one and take it apart!
Thanks folks. got some useful information here. I have taken digital imaging technology for granted. There are much more needed for the project than my current skill level and tool chest has to offer. Glad that I discover early before getting too discouraged for my first project
