Ever wondered what was inside a digital movie camera

[Glenhuon (Bill)]

A friend dropped an old Toshiba digital tape movie camera around, cause he knows I tinker with these electronic gadgets. It was pretty far gone, so out of curiousity before it got consigned to the bin, I took it apart.
The miniaturisation in these things is amazing. What really tickled me was the size of the stepper motors for the Focus/Zoom. Here's a pic of some of its innards.

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

I wonder if those stepper motors could be modified to perform the same function but as an extenal focuser for a DSLR lens.

[Shawn]

Jeez they are tiny, I didnt realise that was a ruler.. A mate of mine makes tiny model flying planes out of motors from cellphone vibrators, and watch batteries as a power source, about 2 and half inces long, and they fly really well, pretty much anywhere the want to, but they fly... May I ask what happened to the camera apart from the obvious...

[Glenhuon (Bill)]

Well, the plastic bits are in the bin, the circuit boards are still on the bench with the tape drive mech (pretty well U/S, someone must have had a tape stuck in it and removed it with a screwdriver or some other brutal instrument)
Kept the lenses, I have a collection of these from all sorts of optical gadgets.
Pride of the collection is a couple of uncoated 6" square ones, probably from theatre lighting. Recently acquired 4 50mm slide projector lenses, still looking for a use for them. Might make good finder or guide scopes. It keeps the brain active, use it or lose it they say

[Shawn]

Ah so it was a VCR, I see. Ive got one of those around the place somewhere, he says looking around for a blunt and brutal instrument...

[xelasnave]

I have pulled one to bits..the motors and the worm drives very handy
alex

[xelasnave]

I let my daughter dismantel most of it and a deck .. she was very intuitive the way she went about it ..she was 7 then
alex

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

WOW! Those stepper motors are only 10mm long and about 8mm wide!!!!!!!

[leon]

I have always wanted to do that to a Camera lens on day, just to see how it all fits together, but i haven't had one that is crappy enough to do it to.

leon

[Glenhuon (Bill)]

The bits come in handy Leon. When I got my first scope, a 60mm refractor, it didn't have a finderscope so I made one. The objective was salvaged from a old stereo camera that I found in the tip, the barrel was a bit of an old stirrup pump tube, the eyepiece was the lens from an 8mm cine projector, and the objective holder and focuser tube were turned down from Onga pump fittings. Still have it, works well even has copper wire cross hairs.