What if? 8mm camera with phone imager?

G

Greg_E

Veteran
So I'm thinking out loud here. There is a company that was selling custom converted Bolex cameras on Etsy called the Digilex. They were buying sensors and building some kind of control board for them. I looked at the images and wasn't thrilled with the resolution provided.

But I'm still thinking how cool it would be to have something like that, and that thinking finally brought me around to thinking about taking an old cell phone, something that can run Filmic Pro to gain the manual controls needed/desired. Pulling the camera module out, buying/building an extension cable, and remove the phone lens assembly. Building/machining/printing a mount. Gutting the camera. And putting the whole Franken-thing together.

Is it possible to get the kind of resolution and color out of these old camera lenses to at least get a decent 1080 image? Will these old lenses resolve anything better? Thinking decent cheap from China phone with an 8mp+ sensor. I'd probably just build a hinge for the phone to flip out for a viewfinder and control.

So is this a worthwhile thing to do in a one off project, or waste of time expecting decently sharp images from these old lenses?

I know, mostly an odd nostalgia device, but it would be very cool using one of the turret lens models. The 16mm cameras are too much money for a project that is probably doomed to fail after years of starting and stopping work on it to bother.
 
I don't want the look of 8mm, I want the old camera body and lenses with modern images. That's the part I'm not sure about, will the old Bolex compatible lenses be up to 1080 quality.
 
As daft as this idea might be, I did do a little more research and it seems that phone sensors have been creeping up in sizes, here's a nice size chart to look at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_sensor_format

This may actually present a problem of sorts, most modern phones will scan more than the 8mm gate. They will need to be "zoomed" in which can affect sharpness because the normal scaling that the sensor is doing will not be in effect. The non-functional Bolex I was looking at (cheap) is gone, have a few Wollensak turret models that I'm now thinking about. The Wollensak are cheaper than any Bolex. Still not sure about the lenses' image quality and not sure how much time, money, energy I want to pile into this right now. Might need to take an old phone apart to see what's what inside before I go forward.

I know, what's the point in all this when I can keep using my GH2 for everything and have just about any focal length I need... Because this would be cool in a different way.
 
Greg_E said:
I don't want the look of 8mm, I want the old camera body and lenses with modern images. That's the part I'm not sure about, will the old Bolex compatible lenses be up to 1080 quality.
Click to expand...

So you want it just for style, not for any real functional reason?
 
It's a neat form factor that I'd like to make usable (good quality) 1080 images with. Not expecting 4K RAW with the most crisp edges ever, but decently sharp with decent color in up to 1080.

And because it is fun to do things that no one else is doing.
 
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