Hello Dr. Duell!
ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote:
How comples is this controller board that's
removed? Is it possible to
recreate it, and thus covnert a normal Nikon camera to work with the
film reocerder?
The board doesn't look overly complicated to me (there is a raster
image on the page I linked to), all it has on it besides a DIP-16 IC is
a resistor, a tantalum cap and another axial component which is obscured
by wires in the pictures, possibly a (zener?) diode. The print on the IC
is alas covered by a large sticker reading "IC# 7" that IME often
indicates it is a custom-programmed part anyway.
When wa this made. There weren't many 16 pi nprogrammable parts other
htan bbipolar PROMs (which doesn't sound likely here) in the 'classic
era'. Of course tere are such parts now.
Alas (for you), the only Nikon I own has no
electtornics in it at all.
The only electrical part is the flash contact.
-tony
If it has provisions for both a motor winder and an external shutter
release, I'd suspect you'd find a way to interface it nevertheless, were
you to try...
There was a motordrive for the Nikon F, but it is very dififcult to find.
And it requires a diffenrt base casting under the shutter to pring out
various cotnrol levers to the motordrive (to indicate, for example, when
the shutter has copmpleted its open/close operation). That part is ever
harder to find.
Have you treid looking for a service manual for the camera on the web?
Some Niko ncamera man aulas are there. THe 'electronic' one I looked at
(F3) didn't include full schematcs, but it did have a wiring diagram and
soem theory of operation. It's a possible source of information.
One more interesting question would be what kind of lens is required
for the recorder application. IIRC there are no refractive optical
elements inside the recorder stand as it is now, the CRT faceplate is
in plain sight behind a cover glass and the selected filter. I can't
measure the distance right now as the recorder is in storage, but I'd
roughly estimate somewhere around 20-30cm to the camera seating plane.
Well, any converging lens sould work optically...
I might be able to help, though. I have a 'Polaroid Videopritner 4', for
all Polaroid assured me they had never made such a beast... This is
similar, but lower-reulotuon device, it displys TV-rate video on an
internal CRT and photographs it.
There's a colour fitler wheel (red, green, blue and a hole) so it cna
print a colour inamge in 3 goes.
Anywy, I did get the camera with mine. It's a normal SX70 polaroid back
and an enlarger lense mounted in a suiable tube. It makes a lot of
sense, an enlarger lense is designed ot be uysed at those sort of
distances nad will be corrected for that (unlike a normal camera lens
which is typoically corrected for much more distant objects -- this is
why put the lens on back-to-front is often recoemnted for close-ups,
where the objed distnace is less than the image distance).
My guess is that he lest uses in your unit was either an enlarger lens or
maybe a 'macro lens'. Nikon cetainly made the latter to fit their
cameras. They made enlarger lenses too (the EL-Nikkors) but you'd need an
adapter to fit those to a camera.
-tony