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Thread: Wild Idea for Next-Gen LF

  1. #11

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    Re: Wild Idea for Next-Gen LF

    Another thing that I've thought would be cool is a standard ground-glass with built-in micro wiring and micro light sensors in a grid. This would result in a grid of tiny dots on your glass, hardly more obtrusive than gridlines, but a small computer attached would be able to meter your scenes in several modes, like a SLR.

    I am all for manual metering techniques and very much enjoy my light meter and figuring exposures, but such a metering glass would redefine the metering back concept and be especially useful for commercial and product work where exposure is critical and time is limited.

    But I would hate to see traditional techniques lost to a device like this.

    And it would suck if you broke it.

  2. #12

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    Re: Wild Idea for Next-Gen LF

    Matt - (checked your website, digging your work) I was a student 10 years ago, and I try to always think of myself as a student. That's what keeps the work inventive. This honestly started in a dream, so (in my endless hours of editing 8x10 scans) I've been thinking of the ins and outs of this. And in my professional work as an architect, I am in contact with a major tech guru client - the kind of uber millionaire who hears your out-of-the-box ideas first and the rest thereafter.

    These things inspired this thinking. I started a group on flickr called 'analog', and I am devoted to film, so I don't want the DGG or device to affect our shooting, only to improve it in the dark night, in the cold, in the rough neighborhoods... all of which is romantic like film, but rough in the reality.

    And these are all just ideas. Just ideas, and I'm asking for more - because who knows - someone might make these things...
    Craig McCormick
    Indianapolis, Indiana

  3. #13

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    Re: Wild Idea for Next-Gen LF

    Craig, what if your DGG device was more like a current binocular hood that would attach to the focusing frame in the same way and which would employ a smaller, current technology CCD and lens that would see the ground glass. Instead of an eye hood there would be a fairly large LCD, and with the transmission properties of the GG known, it would be able do everything you’ve mentioned. This would effectively be a digital camera working against a known GG surface in a mountable unit.

    This would actually be viable even today and would do away with the only piece of your plan which is problematic: the huge piece of silicon for the CCD sensor.

    ???

    Yep, bed time.

  4. #14

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    Re: Wild Idea for Next-Gen LF

    The problem is not so much the display on the back of the camera, as there are a number of relatively inexpensive technologies (thin film flexible displays, etc.) in development that might work. The image capture sensor transmitting the image to the display is the problem.

    The cost of a silicon-based sensor (CCD or CMOS) is a function of the semiconductor process used and the sensor size. Pixel density has virtually zero effect on sensor cost. For example, even though Nikon has not actually fessed up to this, the sensors in the Nikon D3 (12MP) and D3x (24MP) have a similar production cost, since they are both the same size (if you're wondering about this, look at the similarly-sized Sony A900, which supports the same resolution as the D3x at a price point comparable to the D3). So a "low res" sensor doesn't save you any cost versus a "high res" sensor, which I think we all agree would be prohibitively expensive.

    I think the closest you could get to your goal would be to use some type of scanning back to generate the image for the display, then replace the scanning back with a film holder to take the picture. But even that would be cost-prohibitive, let alone practical.

    Realistically, the only way this will work is to shrink the camera and use existing Live Preview capabilities of a medium format digital back on a small format technical camera. But of course now you've lost that big, beautiful 8x10" display to compose with.

    Personally, my LF dream machine is a 4x5" scanning back that could scan at a full 8x10" equivalent resolution within one second. But so far, no one has come close to building such a unit.

  5. #15

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    Re: Wild Idea for Next-Gen LF

    Quote Originally Posted by Vaughn View Post
    While not a Luddite, my first reaction and continued thought about thus is, yuck!

    Take a nice wood and brass beauty and fill it with electronics?! You might as well forget the film and capture the image with the ccd's or whatever.

    I like looking at the GG, everything is there, gloriously upside down and backwards, in full true color and high resolution.

    Oh well, some people love their robotic pets, too...

    Vaughn
    I don't have that problem. The problem I have is hauling out the highbar and the 1980s inverted gravity boots I always wear when shooting landscapes. And the fact that after 15 minutes all the blood has rushed to my brain and I can't thunk no more.

    Being a robotics expert, well a robotics engineer anyway, it's doable. But in the same light as when I think about programming at the house (after hours you know), the big question remains... WHY?

    To the OP... You need a new project in your life.
    May I suggest a Deardorff 8x10 or if that's too tame, a 16x20 camera?

    tim in san jose

  6. #16

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    Re: Wild Idea for Next-Gen LF

    For the sensor side of things you should be able to tile a lot of small sensors to make one big one. The gaps between them should be insignificant since you are only trying to drive a relatively low-res display. Once you move away from trying to cram as many photosites onto a piece of silicon as possible you may find that other, cheaper sensors may become viable. i.e. you only need to get 1 to 2 mp out of an 4x5 or 8x10 sensor. There may be some sort of technology used fora completely different purpose that will never be good enough for camera use, but will be good enough to drive a monitor.

  7. #17

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    Re: Wild Idea for Next-Gen LF

    A couple of things:
    - I have been dreaming about a 4x5" full-frame digital back and it is till not here
    - automation with LF for what ? It is the charm of LF that you are in control of everything, that you are the master of this medium
    - if you want a good preview of what you will get, get your self a DSLR and a laptop
    --- the DSLR can function as an advanced lightmeter, colormeter and polaroid.

  8. #18

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    Re: Wild Idea for Next-Gen LF

    Arch, those are some great and useful ideas.

  9. #19

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    Re: Wild Idea for Next-Gen LF

    Quote Originally Posted by mccormickstudio View Post
    I have this wild idea for a next-generation large format camera. It literally came to me in a dream a few weeks ago and now I can't stop thinking about it.

    ...

    Prophetic? I'm an artist and not an engineer, ...
    A technical idea is not good because it is pleasing. In order to see if a technical idea is good or not first you have to measure the idea in the light of physical and manufacturing possibilities and economic realities. Only after such an analysis you can see if the idea is good or not.
    To have a car that I can call with my mobil, tell it where I'm and it would come to me by itself in the time I indicated - would that be a good idea? A pleasing one perhaps, but when you measure it as said it is not good. Why not? It could revolutionize fright transports, couldn't it? It could but... etc.
    Of course, this also means that once the measuring realities change the properties of the idea change too. But in all cases for a technical idea to be a good one it's not enough to be just a pleasing one.

    This was the case with people like Leonardo da Vinci or Jules Verne. Leonardo is sometimes described as one of the greatest inventors. Rubbish. The majority of his "inventions" could not work at all because of the constraints of that time's technology. Take as an example his parachute idea... Nice to fall down to your death with it
    There is the difference between dreaming (nice in itself, why not) and inventing. Did Jules Verne invent a rocket, a fax, etc.? Nothing of that. Only inventors did. Did Clarke invent satellites? No, but the guys who made the idea workable they did. To have an idea that doesn't work and a one that does is an important difference. The guy who invented Icarus didn't invent an airplane at all. However artistic he was.

  10. #20

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    Re: Wild Idea for Next-Gen LF

    Cool idea. Any bets some companies already have this in their R&D lab? I don't see it costing a lot as a focusing aid/replacement if you don't expect to recoup your R&D investment, which I suspect would be significant.

    My concern would be getting the resolution on the screen with the live view (now on several DSLR's) where the minute focusing changing are obvious, at least equal if not better than a GG. After that it's just a matter of streaming the image to something, and that's existing technology.

    Are you looking for early investors? Sorry, the market killed my venture capital. But hey, good luck with it.
    --Scott--

    Scott M. Knowles, MS-Geography
    scott@wsrphoto.com

    "All things merge into one, and a river flows through it."
    - Norman MacLean

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