Ambro51
Collector/Photographer
I’ve been toying with the idea of something like a 4mm square negative, on microfilm, using a cell phone lens and a simple shutter. Probably using a strip of film, dark loaded, ....the rest to be figured out. Thoughts?
rbiemer
Unabashed Amateur
My first thought after reading your idea was: your shutter will need to be very thin to fit between the lens and your film.
It seems like a wonderfully mad idea and I hope to see you make such a camera!
It seems like a wonderfully mad idea and I hope to see you make such a camera!
The shutter on many sub-mini cameras sits in front of the lens. A Minolta 16 is a good example.
I'd be tempted to get an inexpensive Minox or Yashica Atoron and replace the lens. The cell-phone lens would make a good wide-angle lens, film and shutter already there.
I'd be tempted to get an inexpensive Minox or Yashica Atoron and replace the lens. The cell-phone lens would make a good wide-angle lens, film and shutter already there.
zuiko85
Mentor
Is there a list of chip sizes and lens focal length for cell phone cameras? My Minox 111s is small enough for me. Years ago, after disc film was discontinued and there was a rash of disc cameras at the Goodwill I was thinking of using the 12.5mm lenses the same way but it never went beyond daydreaming.
skucera
Well-known
Twenty years ago I worked with a color scientist who had worked for decades at Kodak on everything from spy satellites to the Disc camera film system. Your idea of using a tiny lens and tiny micro-film-sized negatives sounds like the Disc camera concept. I recommend you do a little Googling about Kodak Disc cameras, film, developing, and prints before you spend any real money developing your idea.
Also, cell phones can miniaturize the lenses so much because they can use tiny sensors. They focus the lenses using Piezo motors, and even motion-stabilize the sensors themselves with more Piezo motors. They are truly amazing feats of engineering, but one way that they can work is because they don't use adjustable apertures or shutters; they use fixed apertures and instead use longer integration times to sense a workable image... rather like dynamically changing film speed or extending the film exposure. Some DSLR's and mirrorless cameras actually implement irises and shutters, but phone cameras don't.
The little cameras we use in our products are all pre-made modules. They come with libraries ready to integrate into the Android OS builds used when you integrate the camera into a BSP, like the SnapDragon 660 BSP. Trying to engineer your own lens and sensor packages and coding up the API's to control it all is months or years of effort. It can be done, so just divide and conquer, proceeding task by task one at a time, and you'll get it going in the end. You'll have some marketable skills too, and make for an impressive job interview.
Back to the idea of a miniature film camera using miniature lenses... miniaturization requires increasing precision of components. Precision lens grinding... precise distances to your film plane... precise metering and exposure.... This precision may be the hardest trick to establishing feasibility. Usually in life, making things smaller usually makes it more difficult.
Good luck,
Scott
Also, cell phones can miniaturize the lenses so much because they can use tiny sensors. They focus the lenses using Piezo motors, and even motion-stabilize the sensors themselves with more Piezo motors. They are truly amazing feats of engineering, but one way that they can work is because they don't use adjustable apertures or shutters; they use fixed apertures and instead use longer integration times to sense a workable image... rather like dynamically changing film speed or extending the film exposure. Some DSLR's and mirrorless cameras actually implement irises and shutters, but phone cameras don't.
The little cameras we use in our products are all pre-made modules. They come with libraries ready to integrate into the Android OS builds used when you integrate the camera into a BSP, like the SnapDragon 660 BSP. Trying to engineer your own lens and sensor packages and coding up the API's to control it all is months or years of effort. It can be done, so just divide and conquer, proceeding task by task one at a time, and you'll get it going in the end. You'll have some marketable skills too, and make for an impressive job interview.
Back to the idea of a miniature film camera using miniature lenses... miniaturization requires increasing precision of components. Precision lens grinding... precise distances to your film plane... precise metering and exposure.... This precision may be the hardest trick to establishing feasibility. Usually in life, making things smaller usually makes it more difficult.
Good luck,
Scott
Ambro51
Collector/Photographer
Well You See, my concept is very much a one off experimental “rig” essentially a basic light tight chamber holding an open lens (with static iris size) at a regular focal distance. At one end, an ultra simple (think “brownie” or spring slide) shutter. A moveable slide on the other side can hold a short narrow strip of film. ......just, simple, no frills , to make a small well focused and exposed negative on a particular film.