[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Hi all

After thinking about the photo of the Pentax film body with the webcam PCB mounted inside Paul (1Ponders) put up a while ago, I've been thinking of doing the same to my Nikon N50 - which I will probably never use again as a day to day unit as I still have two other film bodies that are far more valuable to me (Nikon F and Nikon EL) and now the D40 DSLR. I paid $50 for it on eBay so it's absolutely perfect for the job. It still mounts all my Nikon lenses - which is why I'm interested.

After getting involved in my peltier-cooled webcam project I think I'd also like to try doing the film-CCD conversion on the N50 as a bit of fun. It looks relatively easy to mount the webcam PCB with the CCD still mounted where it should be right on the film plane from the back. If I remove the film pressure 'sled' then it would leave plenty of room for the board.

Now - what would I end up with? Do the camera's electronics become irrelevant just because I'm exposing to CCD rather than film? I guess so as the webcam isn't designed to be exposed for a brief time, but rather outputs a constant video stream. What if I were to perform a long exposure mod on the webcam - would it work the way intended then as the shot would trigger the mirror to flip and the shutter to open - exposing the CCD of a brief time?

The N50 doesn't have mirror lock-up, but it does have a bulb setting - so normal video streaming mode would work if this were set. I've just tried it and the mirror stays up with the shutter open until I re-press the shutter button.

Any ideas anyone?

Cheers
Chris