They transform an old analog camera into digital with Raspberry Pi

The move from old analog cart cameras to digital photography is a clear example of breakthrough innovation. Today most people prefer to have photos stored on the internet or on their hard drive. Which they do from their mobile phone. Well, someone has digitalized an old analog camera with Raspberry Pi.

Surely many of you who are already an age have that old film camera in some drawer, which you had to go to develop once you had already taken the 24 pertinent photos. Among them there were some poorly made or where the camera had been shot because we had it in our pocket. Our youngest readers won’t know it, but back then we couldn’t afford to take 1,000 different photos and discard all but one. They just couldn’t be erased.

They transform an old analog camera into digital with Rasbperry Pi

However, there is one thing that these cameras had and it is nothing other than the fact of being able to capture photos with a higher image quality than the first digital ones. The norm of the digitization process is that twice as much information is required as its analog counterpart. Information that is nothing more than data to be processed and that has required better ISPs in our pocket devices. Well, let’s see how the combination of an analog camera and a Raspberry Pi turns out.

They transform an analog camera into digital with a Raspberry Pi

Specifically, they have done it with a Pi Zero W , and it is that the low consumption and simplified version of the famous Single Board Computer has found a place for the creation of improvised devices that work with batteries. All thanks to its 2 W of energy consumption . What in this case has served to convert an old analog camera, with 70 years behind it, into digital.

Vieja Cámara Raspberry Pi

The project has been carried out by an anonymous person who has taken the pseudonym of Airpocket. To do this, I order an old Bell & Howell Magazine-loading 8mm camera model 172 camera – which after reviewing it and disassembling it, he could see how it was possible to put a Raspberry Pi Zero W on it. However, it is known that the SBC does not have the ability to take photos. To do so, it has added the OB5647 camera module . Of course, the goal of any camera is to be able to take photos anywhere. So a USB rechargeable battery has been added.

Vieja Cámara Raspberry Pi

At the moment the project is not complete, since among other things it is necessary to have the software ready for use and the addition of elements such as an LCD screen to be able to see the photos that are being taken. As for the software, its creator is using OpenCV as the main API to program the different functions of the camera. At the moment it is a project under development, but it has caught our attention because it is an original way of giving our classic cameras a second life.