If I were to stick a 4/3rds sensor in that system, I lose both of those. I still shoot 35mm film as well as 4/3rds digital, and one of the main reason I still stick with 35mm film is for the extra creative control to DOF as well as availability of extremely wide-angle lenses. With full-frame and 35mm, you can get much greater creative control over DOF. The other part of image potential is DOF. But it's not a problem if you're only interested in portait and telephoto photography. You'd need 15mm or under, and availability of such lenses on legacy 35mm systems vary from extremely rare, not bright (high aperture) or just not available at all. You can get wide-angles on 4/3rds cameras using their own lenses, and you can get wide-angle easily enough on full-frame/35mm cameras using any lens, but it's very very difficult to mount a legacy 35mm lens, give it a 2x crop factor as he is offering then still have it wide-angle. By image potential, I mean DOF, and field of view. It will have the same image potential as a $400 mirrorless camera (which these days, have SUPERB lenses), so I don't really see the point. Because digital full-frame cameras cost upwards of $2000, and are usually closer to 3k. If this were full-frame, I'd be all over it, even for $1000.
#DIGIPOD DIGITAL FILM SOFTWARE#
There's is a lot of software correction done, in-camera. He's not offering more than what even the lowest-end micro four thirds camera will offer, and I think the image quality will suffer because he doesn't have Sony's, Panasonic's or Olympus' engineering savoir-faire behind him. I don't think the DigiPod can compete, price-wise. I use an Olympus E-M5 which uses that sensor size, and there are many other cameras with this sized sensor, some of which you can get for $400 with kit lens. This is way ahead in quality of what point&shoot cameras and phones offer. It's interesting, but the crop factor/diminished sensor size is why I think it will ultimately fail. Any digital adapter would have a limited market, and would have to compete with the concept of a completely integrated DSLR that could use my old lenses. But realistically, it's not going to happen. I wish I could use my old cameras digitally. A digital film back, as discussed in chicken's "economical" link above, is more viable, but still not viable enough, for the reasons outlined in that link. Combined with the need to fit into the very thin space of a piece of film, I think the "digital film cartridge" idea is doomed technically. Any "digital film" type thing will have to have adjustability in order to fit a variety of cameras. There was never any standardization of the distance between the film cartridge and the gate where the image was formed. And a "full frame" sensor would be frightfully expensive.
#DIGIPOD DIGITAL FILM FULL#
But unless the digital sensor was a full 24x36mm size, much of the viewfinder would be wasted with a digital back. A large part of the joy in using the old mechanical 35mm cameras is in the big, bright viewfinder. So the market for a digital adapter is likely to drop off to near zero once everyone who wants one has it. There are only so many old 35mm SLR bodies hiding away in closets, and the supply is unlikely to ever increase substantially. Its viewfinder, while not as big and bright as my F3's, does have the nice property that it shows me exactly what my sensor is going to capture, unlike what would happen with a crop sensor used on a standard sized old 35mm SLR. And it has a preview screen on the back that lets me see that I've captured a shot. The D200 isn't as nice as the F3, but it's nice enough. But I bought a Nikon D200 DSLR about 6 years ago, and have only shot a couple of rolls of film since. Each control has one function, and each function has one control.
Change the aperture? Rotate the aperture ring. If you want to change the shutter speed, turn the shutter speed dial. The viewfinders are far superior to any DSLR I've seen, and the controls are completely intuitive, with no menus, mode settings, or other computerized automated stuff to get in the way and mislead you.
#DIGIPOD DIGITAL FILM MANUAL#
I really like the ergonomics of the old manual focus Nikons. I own a Nikon F2, Nikon F3, Nikkormat EL, Nikon FM, and a Nikon FM2n, along with a bunch of lenses for them.