Canon AE-1 D

Canon Rumors
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Fun Stuff
Some folks have a lot of time on their hands.

See more images here: http://forums.dpreview.com/

See video here: http://www.youtube.com/

thanks thepieces & kiel

cr

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  • I’m rather curious as to how he did this. It just looks to me like he managed to drop a point and shoot of some sort into there and get it to all work together. Anyone have any real info on this thing yet?

  • Why doesn’t some one take the digital camera and design something that isn’t like it’s mechanical predecessors.

    A bit like Apple did to the mobile phone.

    Some really fresh ideas would be nice.

  • LOL! Too funny! At least this one still has some use left in it (if only as a P&S with interchangeable lenses).

    My trusty old A-1 sits in a box full of other film gear in the basement…

  • I just had to re-blog this on my blog!!! As I said at my blog, the AE-1P holds special value in my heart.

    THANKS SO MUCH FOR SEEING THIS AND PASSING ALONG!

    I TOO would love to see the “how to” video. I might just have to grab one and do it for fun!

  • There were some attempts at this, but none too successful:

    The periscope lens design started by Minolta to make ultra-thin compact cameras without protruding zoom (still used by brands)

    Bridge cameras that you hold like a video camera, right palm cradling the lens

    The micro-4/3 were deliberately styled to look like small SLRs or big classical compacts.

    I don’t have high hopes for something *really* new. At the end of the day you have to arrange a few essential ingredients (lens, screen, conrol buttons, maybe viewfinder) in a reasonable and usable fashion, and there are only so many ways of doing that.

  • for all those wondering how to do this, it’s simple.
    take your old canon camera, clean out some of the internals, and take a old lens clean out everything but one bit in the front this is essentially just like a uv filter to keep out dust and make the camera look normal.
    next get yourself a point and shoot camera, like the PowerShot SD870 IS used here.
    cut a hole in the back of your old camera to fit in your new camera so that the p&s lens fits right into the back of your old lens, wire up all the essential controls to buttons on the old camera. find a pop up flash off a slr and wire that up as your external flash.
    some glue and additional wiring and there you have it.

    note: i didn’t create this camera, i just looked around a bit to find the p&s back that matched.

  • Do we NEED something new each year?

    Perhaps because there is a lot of influence from the marketing to the design. Look at the M9 – a wonderful camera because it is simple, reduced to a compact photographic machine – but much toooo expensive.

    Perhaps not because a EOS 20D or 40D with the 60mm MACRO lens is a great package to make PHOTOS. I don’t see to much headroom for better photographic solutions … except a full frame cam.

    A full frame digital back for the Canon FD system – e.g. a F1 new – would be great to go back to the old reduced systems.

  • So it’s an utterly pointles poin-and-shoot. The appeal would be the ability to use all that wonderful FD glass in a Full Frame setup (and not in a 4/3 GH-1), but this is just a gimick with the outershell… Anyway, I see no reason why a company like Leaf or Phase One couldn’t release a back for FD cameras. All those backs are easily removable… And FD glass is fantastic.

  • Definitely caught my attention! I wonder if it is actually functional or if it is just a mash-up. Certainly a conversation piece if nothing else. :)

  • Just love the hotshoe-popup flash ;-))

    BTW, when you crank the film advance, will that make the last shot slide off the LCD screen?

  • I don’t know if is there still a glass on the original lens or if now it’s a lens hood :-)

  • Remember digital cameras in the 90s? When they were a fledgling niche product? There were all sorts of unconventional designs. Turns out the form factor pioneered by film cameras was still the best (for SLRs anyway; for point and shoots, the current crop of cameras would be impossible with 35mm or APS film.)

  • Worse. All the disadvantages of the point and shoot without the primary advantage (pocketability.) I guess it looks neat though if you dig old tech aesthetics.

  • Good point. I’m reminded of the Sony Coolpix that had a rotating body separate from it’s lensing system. It looked cool and wasn’t difficult to hold, but meant there was no way to get a decent viewfinder so you always held the thing at arm’s length.

  • what i’ve asked for from reps (not that they have any real power) for a couple of years is a vivitar 3800/nikon fm10 based dslr with only raw, only 1 shot per click, full manual all the time, 10mp full frame sensor (canon could make one with old 5d sensor “cleaned” with 5 years of technology, 100% view finder, easy to use manual focus with a nice confirm light or a single point center af point –

    follow it up with a full line of 50 1.8 style primes in 20, 24, 35, 85, 105 for under 200/ea and you would OWN the college/hs/art school crowds as well as the “retro is cool” crowd. Light, simple, cheap – it would kill

  • Not that today anybody would complain about that.

    In a sense it was the first camera with orientable screen, even if the tail was wagging with the dog.

  • I wonder if they put a S90 in there, and couple the front control ring with the manual focus…. this would be the true AE-1 Digital.

  • Were you thinking about the Nikon Coolpix (as in the Coolpix 900 series), or the Sony Cybershot F series (505, 707, etc.)? Both had a rotating body/lens connection. Both were fun, I still use a Nikon 995 on occasion.

  • A lot of people have been wanting a digital back for their film cameras for a long time (did you see the link above from heh?), and there have been attempts, such as the digital module/back for the Leica R8/9 (very pricey!!). But the camera companies don’t want to sell a back that you can use on an old camera (although the technology has evolved to the point where it would be relatively easy and not too expensive), they want to sell you NEW cameras, which they will then make obsolete in six months so they can sell you another NEW camera, and so on. I’ve also thought for years that the first company with the balls to pull it off for a reasonable price would have a huge market to themselves, at least until everybody else copied them because of the ‘new fad’. Oh, well. I have lots of digital stuff, but I haven’t got rid of (and still love to use) my film stuff. Because 50-100 years from now I (or someone else) will still be able to pick up a neg or slide and look at a picture. How many people will continually transfer all of their photos to each new storage medium that comes out. Can you imagine trying to read a CD/DVD (how quaint!) even ten or fifteen from now? Yeah, right…

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