Major #telescope hosts world's largest #digitalcamera: how it will transform astronomy
Massive telescope will map the Universe and provide an evolving record of the #SolarSystem and distant #stars.
To be seen at full resolution, each of the #VeraCRubin Observatory’s 3,200 megapixel shots — captured with the world’s largest digital camera — would take several hundred high definition (HD) television screens put together.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01798-2

Design Milk : The Fujifilm X half Is a Retro-Inspired Digital Camera for Everyday Creativity https://design-milk.com/the-fujifilm-x-half-is-a-retro-inspired-digital-camera-for-everyday-creativity/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-fujifilm-x-half-is-a-retro-inspired-digital-camera-for-everyday-creativity #digitalcamera #photography #Technology #Fujfilm #camera #Main

Leica-Inspired $150 Point-and-Shoot Aims to Replicate Charm of Analog Photography https://petapixel.com/2025/06/04/leica-inspired-150-point-and-shoot-aims-to-replicate-charm-of-analog-photography/ #compactcamera #digitalcamera #fujifilmxhalf #pointandshoot #kickstarter #Equipment #echolens #analog #leica #News #film

Yashica FX-D Camera Sports Six Film Sims and a ‘Film’ Advance Lever https://petapixel.com/2025/05/29/yashica-fx-d-camera-sports-six-film-sims-and-a-film-advance-lever/ #digitalcamera #kickstarter #yashicafxd #Equipment #yashica #News

A Diamond In The Rough? How A Plan For A Full-Spectrum Conversion Went Astray

I’ve been doing a fair bit of film photography just lately. There’s a new Shitty Camera Challenge coming up in June, and my participation in the Frugal Film Project with the Rapid format Welta Penti II led me down a Rapid film system rabbit hole that I don’t think I’ll ever escape from. But there’s always a technique that’s near and dear to my heart, making digital aerochromes, and sometimes the desire to produce a digital aerochrome can be quite overpowering. 

If you’re not aware, ‘back in the day’ Kodak made a colour infrared film stock called Aerochrome. It would produce the most amazing looking infrared images where vegetation, which normally comes out white with black and white infrared films, would appear shades of a lovely rich red. Sadly, I never got to use Aerochrome, and Kodak withdrew the emulsion in around 2009. However, there is an alternative. 

Originally developed (no pun intended) for use with black and white infrared film, Joshua Bird devised a method that mimics the look of Aerochrome film. Using green, red, and infrared filters, Bird made an infrared ‘trichrome’ that really is a good reproduction of Kodak’s old film stock. Of course,  I’m not really in a position to use black and white film, and I’m impatient, so I came up with a solution that uses Joshua Bird’s technique with digital cameras. 

The slight snag is that the best digital cameras to use with this technique are older CCD sensor cameras, and not the CMOS sensor cameras of today. Fortunately, there are plenty of old point and shot cameras around, and here in Portugal an excellent source of cheap digicams is the Computer Exchange (CEX) website. In addition to specific models, they sometimes offer ‘generic’ digital cameras for just a few Euros, and whenever one appears on the website I am tempted to buy it. After all, the most I’ve paid is about 5€ and with postage I can get a working digicam for less than the price of a pint in the UK. What can go wrong?

Of course, you don’t actually know what you are going to get, as apart from the resolution of the camera in the description the rest of the website entry is also generic, even the image of the camera. That said, of the several ‘generic’ cameras that I have bought from CEX they’ve mostly been from reputable manufacturers, there’s never been a fake Canon or Nikon, and sometimes I’ve received a real gem, like the Samsung Digimax U-CA3 that cost the princely sum of 1€ and produces the most wonderful digital aerochromes. 

So I had this urge to pick up a cheap digital camera and convert it to full-spectrum so that I can make some digital aerochromes. This involves taking the camera apart and removing the infrared cut filter that is fitted over the sensor.  You can always use an uncovered camera, especially ftom the noughties when the cut filters weren’t as efficient as they are nowadays, but removing the filter is always better,  and besides it means that you can take infrared images hand-held.

Anyhow, last weekend a 7MP ‘generic’ digital camera appeared on the CEX website for 4€, and yesterday the doorbell rang. It was the postman with a small envelope from CTT (the Portuguese postal service). Bringing the pack inside, I was completely surprised with what I found: a Beautiful little Sony CyberShot W17 in its faux leather case. OK, it’s a little like a brick in its design, but I knew instantly that there was no way that I could bring myself to tear this one open to remove the cut filter.

First introduced by Sony in 2005, The Sony CyberShot W17 is a 7.2MP digital compact camera with a 7.9-23.7mm Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lens. It has various automatic exposure modes, but can also be used manually, although I haven’t figured out how to do that yet. In the early noughties, camera manufacturers hadn’t standardised on the memory storage system,  and Sony was no exception. The W17 uses the Sony Memory Stick, a proprietary storage format that uses a long, thin plastic card. These are not that easy to get a hold of nowadays,  but fortunately, this camera included a 256MB Memory Stick Pro (a shorter version of the Memory Stick) and a Memory Stick adapter. I couldn’t actually believe my luck, as often as not these are all stripped out of the devices and sold separately. 

As well as a few normal shots in colour, I set the mode to black and white and took some images with colour and infrared filters to make a digital aerochrome. Back home, I downloaded the images from the memory stick onto my laptop and fired up GuIMP photo editor. Immediately I could see that the infrared response of the sensor was really good. My method for making digital aerochromes, from the article by Joshua Bird, used the digital images taken with infrared, red and green filters. The images were layered as red, green and blue layers, respectively. The blending mode for the red and green layers was set to addition and the results were spectacular! With beautiful pastel red vegetation and natural looking buildings and sky.

All in all, the Sony CyberShot W17 is a lovely little camera. The results are clean, if nothing special, but the infrared response was delightful. I’m definitely not going to modify this one for full-spectrum, though, so it looks like my search for a cheap noughties point and shoot camera just for conversion will have to wait a while.

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#Aerochrome #Camera #CyberShot #Digicam #Digitalcamera #Photography #Retro #Shittydigital #Sony #Urban #Vintage