A DIY photographer built his own full-frame camera and open-sourced the project | Hacker News Reader

A DIY photographer built his own full-frame camera and open-sourced the project

dpreview.com

162 pointsjbellis30 comments

Oh I thought dpreview had shut down but it seems after the announcement they took it back and then there seems to be acquired by Gear Patrol.

https://www.dpreview.com/news/8995784126/dpreview-an-update

https://www.dpreview.com/site-news/8298318614/dpreview-com-l...

Who needs full-frame when you can macguyver a large format camera?

https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectese/albums/721576231876...

That'd be an interesting subsequent follow-up variation for this camera project. Adding a motor and sliding rail, plus software support. :)

This is an absolutely unhinged level of a pet project, and I love it so much.

His repository is https://gitlab.com/zephray/sitina1. The hardware list seems somewhat incomplete, e.g., missing the metal ring and connector for the lens mount and pcbs.

I guess this is more of a specifications hardware list than a complete list of parts that you need to build it.

Potentially allowing you to choose which mount? Then again, the model might need adjustment to allow the proper distance for the selected mount type.

will*

(Almost?) all mounts have their own focal distance from the backplane. I don't know of any two that share the same distance.

with the use of shims, BMD cameras can switch out their mount from EF, PL, or B4 options. so it could be designed with this style in mind, and even make a link to BMD's site to purchase their kit of shims

Aye, a universal mount is possible if you have a custom housing for each mount type to match the backplane. Using BMD equipment might run afoul of patents... I don't know enough about the legal end of equipment manufacturing to say.

But it would still require custom mounts for each lens type... which is 100% doable.

Lens mount could be proprietary. ES belongs to Canon.

I wonder how difficult it would be to do this with something like an old A7RII - there seems to be a good amount of older Sony A-series cameras with some kind of display or motherboard issues on ebay, but otherwise perfectly functional sensors

I have been passively looking at doing something like you are suggesting, but then also turning it into more of a video camera. My main motivation is that it seems pretty much impossible to get a off the shelf sensor that has DPAF.

One big hurdle getting the datasheet for the sensors - they are usually quite quirky and even if you get the datasheet and all documentation you will still need support from the manufacturer to get everything working reliably.

I think the issue would be the missing datasheet. But I was thinking the same, old cameras seems to be the easiest source of a good sensor.

Pretty sure I saw a direct link posted to it on here not too long ago.

Great project! Congratulations to this young, and talented builder!

Was also fun to watch his video, see the progress, his nice home lab, and all the cool retro stuff he has around.

Keep it up.

https://archive.ph/zac2Nx

The comment that captured my attention:

   SafariBob
   Meh... This is so easy to do. Anyone with moderate lego skills can put this together in an afternoon.

HN reader found in the wild?

No, an HN reader would need the full weekend

A HN reader would expound on why building you own camera is a waste of time, and anyway it should be written in Rust, and should have used a RISC-V or Mill processor, then gone back to reading HN.

I think he's reviewing the wrong camera... https://petapixel.com/2024/08/12/this-lego-camera-is-a-real-...

I saw that as well. Can't tell if SafariBob is trolling or if he usually does afternoon lego projects with home built pick and place machines, reflow ovens, FPGAs, custom flex PCBs, C++ and verilog... But if he does I am deeply interested.

I wish there was a way to buy the hardware and get on with the project.

Does it run Linux?

Someone linked the GitHub. That should have the PCB grbr files; maybe you can get them made yourself and just buy the discrete/processor components from DigiKey. Also, DigiKey red makes PCBs.

That's a high barrier to entry for someone coming from the software side. Just sourcing components can be a shitshow.

It could if you want to. Xilinx Zynq 7010 has a Cortex A9 processor core.

I wish more cameras had no eyefinder. I never use it, it is a waste of resources and a needless weight and volume.

On a full sized interchangeable lens camera, I’d give up having a screen completely before giving up the viewfinder. It depends on what and how you shoot, of course, but trying to shoot sports or live music without a viewfinder would be horrible.

you can get Fuji GFX with detachabke eye finder.

That's great need to look into this RPi is cool but the quality is disappointing imo.

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