oldschool camera

[flipje van thiel]

Hi,

I'm on this quest for quite some time, looking for a digital camera that works without autofocus auto-everything. Reason is that i want to digitize a few really old and charming camera's that i have lying around. [50's] at first i thought ok i strip a relatively cheap compact and 'fool' the autosystems. but things get complicted then. as a trained mechanic/designer i don't fear a challenge but the whole idea was to be able to take [digital] pictures again without stress and hassle. like in the old days. focus by hand and shoot.

finding the right camera to strip en transplant is tough job. almost about to put things aside for a while i ended up here. and this looks good.

so finally my point: do you think it will be possible to hack firmware in such way that the camera boots in manual mode and ignores all the auto functions?
in the end all i need is some sort of digital-silicon film replacement [with memorycard] to put in the ancient camera.


grt bastiaan

[mrproper]

Interesting. Let me ask you what kind of compact digital cameras have you looked at?

[PhyrePhoX]

well certainly, yes, this is possible using chdk. either via scripts (that run automatically and set all desired parameters at startup and then exit) or you can even customize chdk to your liking, a little knowledge of C should suffice. interesting project you're trying to accomplish there. good luck

[DataGhost]

When I was working on the S5IS port it took me a while to find the proper variables for the focussing system, so I 'disabled' it for a while. When zooming, focus did nothing. I can turn off autofocus partially, it'll still focus when I half-press the shutter-button but it will NOT do that when the camera is set to manual focus (button). It's still on my todo list but it should be possible to enable MF, as the firmware can also do that. It's even possible to let CHDK 'press' the MF button for about a second when starting the camera, so it'll be in MF mode all the time. Other systems can be bypassed similarly. We have the firmware, the firmware controls the entire camera so we can control the entire camera as well. It just takes some time to figure out everything.

I don't really know how you're planning on focussing by the way, it's quite tedious to do it with the buttons IMO. I guess you have a focus ring + additional lens on the body you're planning on putting the camera in?