Digital Nikonos RS conversion

I have a forum Question,

I was wondering if a conversion to digital using a Nikonos RS housing is possible and has anyone attempted it?

I was thinking of trying it, by removing the guts, placing a d100, d70, d1x or what ever else is close to fitting, milling the housing if nessasary, providing new controls or electronics to operate, and cutting a rear window for viewing the images.

Am I crazy? Does anyone even own an RS anymore? Would you be willing to spend money to "upgrade" your RS system?

Your thoughts are appreciated,

Mark

Mark....all that clean air, sunshine and clear water has affected your sense of reality

But, I like the way you think

Karl

You may have an easier time building it from scratch starting with parts from Sony.

i have tossed the idea around .. and heard a rumour canon were gonna do it ... but i don;t think anyone will do it just cause of how much money the RS lost Nikonos

i have tossed the idea around .. and heard a rumour canon were gonna do it ... but i don;t think anyone will do it just cause of how much money the RS lost Nikonos

Everyone I know who's shot an RS raves about it, but it's a maintenance nightmare. I think it's possible to make a digital one that has a lot fewer moving parts that has to be sealed. If Canon ever comes out with a nice one, I would be interested.

The RS was essentially a waterproofed F801 (N80 in the US?)

The D100 and D70 are near enough the same size, (I did look at modifying my Aquatica housing for the F801 :? ).

To be honest it would probably work out chaper to buy a ready made housing for whatever you plan to use, but if you have time and money to hand (you are not going to be diving during these hurricanes) go for it, it's an interesting project.

Well in my mind apart from the Lense changing the whole thing could be one big sealed unit, no film to take out so even less to worry about flood with this.

External ports for downloading images and charging batteries that are water proof. Put a gig or more of internal memory or a memory card thats fixed in so don't have an openign for that. I was wondering if you oculd seal the lense port with some glass like wet lenses almost so it is completely sealed.

Would be very usefully not just for underwater, but wildlife photography .. other photography where cameras are exposed to all the elements.

It could be the way forward .. hell put a tiny wireless card in it .. and you can remotely download while underwater ! I'm taking it a little too far now

You might try to get your hands on an old Fuji S2pro and open it up. There are 2 circuit boards that come out - one is the power and processing board and the other board has he CCD on it. There MIGHT be enough room in the RS, but I doubt it.

The only problem I see is that these digital cameras have the "camera part" and the "digital part" linked together. So that when you press the shutter, the "camera part" talks to the digital part and tells the CCD what to do, etc.

If you had a really good EE maybe you could figure it out though. That would certainly be cool.

Cheers

James

I shot an RS for about 4 years. I never really liked it. Nikon wanted you to believe it was based on an F801/N8008 but it was actually based on F601/N6006 - which was so obselete when the camera came out that housed cameras were automatically better.

The viewfinder is awesome, the wide angle optics are awesome. The rest can go in the skip.

Macro was a joke. 50mm just wasn't long enough and with the Rene Aumann 2x teleconverter which made it 100mm the AF was a complete joke. It was also very heavy in the water.

I think it might be more profitable to modify an existing housing to take the RS wide angle lenses (like Subeye did).

I think another problem of trying to get a DSLR in there would be what to do with the LCD screen? I certainly wouldn't want a DSLR without one.

Alex

agree, subeye reflex would be the better approach.

http://www.subspace.ch/English/Photography.htm

accepts Nikon land & RS glass.

I thought about this crazy beast a while ago. But came to the conclusion it is simply obsolete as well. no AF, .....

Julian

I reckon Jolly's on the right track.

It'd be nice to be able to use those beautiful lenses...

Since you are dreaming of doing this modification ... is this what you are looking for ?

Before we get too excited, this is just a recreation (too much time on my hands?) of what would be the ideal U/W camera for me. 8 megapixels, ITTL, backward compatible with old nikonos lenses, and a new set of lenses including AF10mm F2.8, AF10-20mm F3.5, AF 50mm macro with built in ringflash, etc .

It features Live preview and a extremely short shutter lag.

The camera has underwater white balance mode, including depth white balance, full wireless configuration with the new SB110ITTL as master slave and can drive many other slaves, including other brands, Backwards compatible with DTTL, and TTL and AA .

Flash synch all the way up to 1/500. 30 custom settings.

The camera kit is priced at $1295.

Cant I dream?? Come on nikon... you can do it.

Hermit crab, you will get that venerable saint of photography Jim Church upset with your blasphemy. He's likely to send a storm your way for defacing a Nikonos camera!

Joke apart, call me partial, but the future belong to housed camera, it just make more economical and parctical senses, wich was some of the main reasons for the failure of the RS it lacked both, too heavy, too costly, too slow and for most people too limited.