At least as far as the inner workings go, there isn’t much difference between a single-lens reflex (SLR) camera that uses film and a digital SLR (DSLR) camera that uses an electronic sensor, except for the method of capturing images. So adding a digital image sensor to a formerly analog camera like this seemed like an interesting project [Wenting Zhang]. But this camera went a little further than that by instead building a complete full-frame digital camera almost from scratch.

The camera uses a full-frame design and although the project originally started around an SLR mechanism, in the end [Wenting] decided not to keep this complex system. Instead, to keep the design simple and more affordable, a mirrorless design is used with an electronic viewfinder system. It’s also a passive M-mount lens, which means plenty of manual lenses will be available for this camera without having to completely reinvent the wheel.

As for the sensor, [Wenting] he wanted something relatively simple with available datasheets, so he turned to industrial cameras to find something suitable, settling on a Kodak charge-coupled device (CCD) sensor paired with an i.MX processor. All electronics have publicly available datasheets which is important for this open source design. However, a lot more work went into this build than just selecting parts and 3D printing the case, and we definitely recommend anyone interested to watch the video below to see how it was all done. And for those who want to go back to the beginnings of this project and take a different route, it is definitely possible to convert an analog SLR into a digital one.