It would have to vary pretty heavily by film camera model, and many probably can't be nondestructively modified that way. Nikon F and whatever Canon's film flagships were, sure - those are designed to take a motor drive winder, so you can remove the back cover entirely. But my heirloom Nikkormat FTn, for example, wasn't designed that way, and removing the film cover hinge pin would at best be a very fiddly task with a significant risk of damaging the hinge.
That said, and assuming you use a camera module that you can disassemble far enough to expose the sensor, it shouldn't be too hard. You'd most easily I think design and 3D-print a replacement cover with a light-tight fitting to place the sensor on center at the flange focal distance (ie in the designed film plane), and route whatever cables out to where you could connect them. Maybe also a case for the Pi that has a 1/4"-20 screw to mount on the tripod socket, just so you don't have to cram your face past it to get a good look down the viewfinder.
You'd probably have a hard time getting anything like a wide-angle shot. I don't know offhand what sensor sizes are common in RPi camera modules, but I feel like expecting 1"-class would be expecting too much, so you'd be dealing with a pretty fierce crop factor.
I was thinking about this yesterday while looking for resources on building a board to read data from a modern sensor from something like an a7 (turns out its way over my head). The issue you’d run into with the pi hq camera module assuming you can get the focal plane right and everything to fit is that the sensor is way smaller than 35 film so you’ll have a rather large crop factor.
It can be done, yes, but it's a risky hack of an operation that literally involves prying the cover off the camera with a knife and polishing away the filter. It's not production-ready by any means.
I've often daydreamed about a sub-unit that could fit in the back of a film camera and contain a sensor and some electronics. The sensor part would be thin enough to fit over the pressure plate and the electronics would be in the film can space along with a micro sd card for storage. The existing aperture/shutter would continue to control the light reaching the sensor. Basically digital film. That would be neat.
I've daydreamt before of a device, sensor attached by thin film ribbon cable to a faux film canister holding the computery bits. A general fit solution to film camera conversion. But, sensor thickness and power source may be intractable problems.
When I looked, most parts-house available sensors are small and even a 1" format sensors are pretty dear. MFT, APS-C, etc. were a multiple of a complete entry level interchangeable lens camera. For a pinhole camera with a small sensor, it's going to be hard to frame a specific subject because the sensor's field of view is tiny. Even a wire viewfinder will probably struggle with framing due to parallax. Basically the low cost sensor for pinhole photography is photo-chemical film.
A hacky alternative for a might be modifying a flatbed scanner. Just step the photo array slowly enough that there's reasonable exposure at each point. The good part is that a flatbed scanner is a stupid big sensor and there is some literature for hacking them. But for a pinhole, I'd expect the exposures to be rather long even for pinhole photography.
Is it feasible for the Bayer mask to be swapped out as an aftermarket change on a modern digital sensor? Or does that require clean room manufacturing processes to repackage it?
I had a similar thought. Imagine a custom camera body to add a beam splitter for parallel sensors much like the original process with parallel film. One regular RGB sensor for the visible scene, and one monochromatic sensor for the narrow background spectrum.
But, I have no idea if the beam path could be devised to do this with commodity sensors and lenses, to minimize what must be bespoke.
Mostly I'd guess they don't have the fabrication capability to do this. Nikon as far as I can tell doesn't make any of their own sensors. Canon doesn't make the sensors in their cheaper cameras (from what I can tell from googling, and my own teardowns).
Sony does, and a number of smartphones use Sony sensors.
I wonder whether this technique could be adapted to produce a something like a digital equivalent of the Fuji/Hasselblad XPan camera, or a 617 camera (with an aspect ratio of about 3:1).
The stumbling block with conventional sensors is that no one wants to commit to a production run of an odd shape of sensor.
I'd love to test something like this. It doesn't matter if the end result or the experience are not that great compared to using film or a purpose built digital camera.
The idea of manually replacing physical film with a sensor that fits inside that footprint is just so damn cool that it's entertainment on its own.
I bet by changing up the sensor pixels this would be a pretty cost effective way of making a low res FLIR camera, or really any imaging band. Using a different pin hole you might even be able to image things with xrays, neutrons, or strong 100Ghz through THz radio waves.
I have a sack full of just gorgeous Nikon lenses and camera 'backs'. But the backs are all single lens reflex for 35 mm film. I have nothing that uses CCDs (charge coupled devices, solid state, electronic photon captures).
But the lenses are just gorgeous.
Is there any way I can get a modern camera back, electronic, with a CCD or some such photon capture means, etc. that will let me exploit my old lenses, including, right, a just gorgeous 50 mm lens, a 108 mm, a 200 mm, etc.? So, the modern camera back need not have a mirror and, instead, show in the view finder what it sees via its CCD sensors.
with a bit of setup you could remove the lens (while keeping it electrically connected for EXIG purposes) and then project whatever image you want on to the sensor.
That said, and assuming you use a camera module that you can disassemble far enough to expose the sensor, it shouldn't be too hard. You'd most easily I think design and 3D-print a replacement cover with a light-tight fitting to place the sensor on center at the flange focal distance (ie in the designed film plane), and route whatever cables out to where you could connect them. Maybe also a case for the Pi that has a 1/4"-20 screw to mount on the tripod socket, just so you don't have to cram your face past it to get a good look down the viewfinder.
You'd probably have a hard time getting anything like a wide-angle shot. I don't know offhand what sensor sizes are common in RPi camera modules, but I feel like expecting 1"-class would be expecting too much, so you'd be dealing with a pretty fierce crop factor.
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