In article ,
nospam wrote:
In article .com,
wrote:

Thanks for the reference to the "silicon film", Honestly, I never
heard that before. Again, there are people out there who have thought
ideas like this. However, I wonder why this particular idea became
"cold". Could it be for one or more of the following reasons?

the main reason is that it requires physical modification to the camera
for it to work.

the surface of film is light sensitive, whereas the surface of a sensor
is not - it has the bayer filters, micro-lenses, anti-alias filter and
infrared cut filter in front of the actual light sensitive layer.
thus, one can't just put a filter up against the film rails and expect
things to be in focus - it would need to fit further forward.

that means either milling the film rails or fit the whole unit within
the film opening so the focal plane is physically in the right place.
unfortunately, there's a shutter mechanism that gets in the way of
doing that.

if that problem was somehow solved, there would still need to be some
sort of communication between the camera and the device so it knew when
to read an image and store it.

and then there's little things like a fixed white balance and fixed iso
rating when it is the camera (just like film). or a readout for number
of pictures available and battery level.

other than that, it is a good idea.

All of these problems didn't prevent Kodak from making quite a few digital
backs for existing Nikon and Canon cameras (the backs were expensive
enough that you would get a body for free with the back, but the body
was essentially unmodified).


--
That was it. Done. The faulty Monk was turned out into the desert where it
could believe what it liked, including the idea that it had been hard done
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-- Douglas Adams in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency