Do you have an analog camera that you no longer use? With the Raspberry Pi Zero You may as well turn it digital.
Even if you are a fan of analog cameras, analog film is now a significant cost and hassle. For those of you who do not want to throw away your old analog camera, YouTuber befinitiv has found an interesting solution. take one Raspberry Pi Zero, combine it with a 5MP camera unit and place it all inside an old 35 mm camera body.
It is a smart and effective hack that should not cost a lot of money. Befinitiv made a small round housing in the shape of a 35 mm photographic spool. Fit a Pi Zero, a battery and a 5MP camera sensor to this housing.
All together like a volume, they resemble the spool of a camera that, with the film spread, passes in front of the shutter and reaches the fixed spool.
When you open the camera shutter, the image is captured by the Raspberry Pi 5MP. Using an old camera function (night shot), befinitiv can keep the camera shutter open indefinitely and take a video with the Pi drive. This video can be streamed directly to a computer using the Pi Zero wireless capabilities, a very interesting feature.
Of course, this hack has some drawbacks. The 5MP sensor is smallers from the 35mm image coming through the lens, so videos appear cropped or zoomed. Furthermore, it seems that the befinitiv cannot be drawn yet photos with this hack – synchronizing the Pi module with the analog camera shutter would definitely require a lot of work.
If you're interested in making a digital camera out of an old camera with a Pi Zero, then check out befinitiv's YouTube video walkthrough. There are links to components of this constructions, as well as a handy CAD file.
