i had an idea for a project a few days ago, and have been mulling it over in my mind lately, and i think it would be cool to make a digital brownie-hawkeye camera. for those of you who either weren't around when these were new (like me), or you haven't realized how much you like photography (i seem to really like it), here is a pic of one with easy to read labelled holes: the way you use a brownie is you hold it at about waist height (for me at least) and look down through hole 1, a small mirror angles your sight out through hole 2. that is the viewfinder setup. the actual shutter is hole 3, the film goes right behind it. i envisioned a small digital camera (nothing expensive, obviosly, maybe 3MP) hacked to have the shutter in the original position on the brownie (hole 3), the flash on hole 2 (is there is one on the camera), and the LCD would sit in a chopped hole 1, modded to fit the screen. since the actual camera parts wouldn't really take up much space, i could fill the rest with batteries to give the camera an adequate life, instead of recharging every three seconds like most cameras. how hard do you think it would be to do this? i looked on eBay and saw the going price seems to be about $10 USD. not bad, since i might need 3 or 4 to get it right. [off topic] i want to use this particular model because it was my grandpas first camera, he bought it when he got back from germany after the war. made in 1953, and still works (i took a few ghetto snapshots in photo class by cutting some photo paper (light sensitive stuff) to fit back where the film sat, worked great, except i got negative images instead of positives)
I have never hacked a camera b4! wow good idea i like it! anyways i am pretty sure that the camera LCD and everything is all built on the same board and it would be next to impossible and improbbale to get the lcd and main board seperated! you could get like a tilt (seperated from the actual camera) screen camera but those are gonna cost you!
Wow, a Brownie! I used that exact same model for a project in college, and the experience was pretty fun. Before you hack away at it, if you want to try the camera with film there is a really good tutorial for re-spooling modern 120 roll film onto the vintage 620 spools at The Brownie Camera Page. As far as moding it into a vintage digital camera, I think it's a pretty cool idea. If it works, you could take the idea further and use it for a photo project. Maybe an "old vs. new" kind of thing. Enjoy the Brownie, they're loads of fun! -monkey
the brownies are stone cold reliable, i heard they have 3 moving parts!!! i have more moving parts in my cell phone! (counting the buttons)
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1221025&CatId=0 doesn't have any optical zoom, which is good because i don't reall want to chop up the front of the camera too much for an extending lens, runs on AA's, which are tiny, and (i assume) means it runs on 3v, few high cap li-ions in there with a 3v regulator and you some real battery life. does this look good to anyone with actual "expierience" with cameras? i just look at the pictures...
