How come you can't upgrade a camera, like a computer or Camaro?

[herman252]

I was wondering. If you can upgrade your PC with a new CPU , hard drive, or motherboard. And you can even upgrade your car's CPU for more horse power, or even change a carburetor system to a fuel-injection one. Whats stopping some electronic firm from creating a kit or upgrade of some kind that would change, lets say, a Canon 1D 4 mega-pixel unit into a 8 or 16 mega-pixel unit? And why not a digital back for a Nikon F4 or Canon T-90 that was (fire-wire) tethered to a PC or Lap Top or PDA (for capture and software control.)?

I see a scratched up or lightly dented EOS-1n or F4 as not really being a collectors item, but the features and build quality of these units seem like a good starting point for a little upgrade techno razzle-dazzle.

When I see TV shows where people take 60's and 70's Muscle Cars and upgrade them with modern electronics, I think it would be cool if you could do something like that with old camera hardware.

_____________________________
EDIT UPDATE _________________
_____________________________

I was thinking that the premium price that you paid for a camera like the Nikon F3, F4, or Canon F1, EOS 1N, or EOS 3, was a lot in part due to stuff like alloy chasis's, weather sealing, rugged body, spot/multi metering, fast tough shutter blades, different flash sync features, and the like.

I'm not sure about this, but I think the CMOS, CCD, or digital part would be located or done at the film plane area. I think the light metering is done somewhere else in the camera, unless you're talking about OTFP (off the film plane), and I'm not sure how and where AF is done. I see some difficulty with syncing or triggering the digital component with the shutter release button, and maybe having to set ISO on the digital back and the camera to keep in sync.

When I see how small some of these digital point & shoot, 4 to 8 mega-pixel cameras are becoming, I think most of the electronics could fit into a 35mm yellow film canister.

I have no idea why the cost of a digital back for a medium format camera over twice the price of any DSLR and remains so. I was under the impression that the industry was always thriving to manufacture chips and stuff cheaper.

I'm sure I'd lose portability, and some ease of use, But If owned an old top of the line Canon, Nikon, or whatever, and also a compliment of nice and varied optics and accessaries to go with it , and was really familiar and enjoyed using it, I wouldn't mind spending the price of a of good lense for a digital back that would give me just some nice JPG or Raw images. I , personally wouldn't need a lot of your comtemporary features like ; beep on/ beep off, file folder options, auto play, file protect, auto power off, landscape / portrait mode, custom functions, and the like.

Over Simplification, Bare with me;
Traditional:
Light (image) to
OPTICs to
CAMERA to
CONTROL (aperture/shutter)to
FILM(image).
Then FILM to DARKROOM (With chemicals,timing,burning,dodging, , ,).
Result-A PRINT...

Digital:
Light (image) to
OPTICs to
CAMERA to
CONTROL (aperture/shutter)to
CHIP(image)
Then CHIP(image) to CPU (With Algorithms,C++,MIT degrees, , ,)
Result-JPEG (and the like.)

My question is; do you need to do all the CPU stuff on the camera?

I wouldn't expect to be utilizing the top of the line CMOS or CCD chip, or matching the performance or features of current digital cameras in a lot of respects. If the current king of the hill is a 16 or 22 meg chip , and the industry can produce a 6 meg at a fraction of the cost or has an inventory of them because it's no longer the hot number, I could settle for it. Of course I wouldn't expect the original manufacturer of the cameras to perform the modification or build the digital back. They'd probably charge an arm and a leg and want to sell you full intergration with the camera body. We're talking about used camers here. I'd expect it would be some after-market company. ( How about KODAK making them; that would be ironic, they could call it the "VENGEANCE", yeah the "Kodak Vengeance Digital Back".)

Like I said earlier , you'd lose some features and maybe portability. The camera set-up might be resigned to studio use or tethered to PC or Lap-Top for immediate veiwing. But I still think filling up a 60 gig hard drive on a used Lap-Top using my old telephoto and wide angle lenses would be fun. ( I haven't been following the development of PDAs, but I would guess they are more powerful than I imagine.) (Or just have the digital back basically contain a CMOS/CCD chip, large buffer, and a Wireless chip of some sort and transmit the pixels to a processing device , computer.)

As for digital cameras of today; lets say you have a Nikon 1DX or a Canon 1D, and two or three years from now you still own it in mint condition(expired warranty though). Whats stopping some after-market tech company from being able to drop a 12 mega-pixel chip in it, if the chips are cheap. ( I'm assuming the parts in an electronic camera are modular in some fashion.)

As for my analogy of cameras to PCs & cars.

With old PC Pentium units that ran in the low Mghz (not Gghz) range you were able to add CD players, then CDW players, then DVD players, as well as cards that added USB, FIREWIRE, fast VIDEO, WIRELESS,, , support. You couldn't run it all at the same time, but for the most part it worked. Just a lot the medium has changed.

As for cars, I use as a basic example so please forgive me if I'm wrong: If you wanted a sports car and you take an old Mustang or Camaro. If you rebuilt or repaired them with all new or contemporary after-market parts, you'd find it cheaper than trying to repair with OEM (original equipment manufacture) parts. You'd probably end up with a safer and faster car than the original.
You wouldn't be faster than a brand new Corvette. But for that intangible sports car owner thing you'd almost as cool. (p.s. Don't spend money on an expensive paint job right away, just prime most it, that way you get labeled as a rebuilder as well as a sport car owner. The label just as long as the 'new car owner' thing, until people figure out you can't afford a paint job.)

Well, enough of my rambling on and on.
If one of the major strengths of the digital photo evolution is one of convenience, I can't argue with that. I just thought there might be some kind of market for low cost conversion of high end cameras feasible.

CONJECTURE:
In the future when cameras have like really advanced wireless capabilities, do you think you'll need it to be equipped with a firewall to prevent hackers from stealing your shots or manipulating. ( ". . . some hacker camped outside my studio and stole my product shoot and sold it. . . or . . . " I'm sorry, but I'm pretty sure your ex-husband was there at the wedding and hacked my Blad, what you got against Boris Karlof anyway, the groom wasn't that much of a looker. . .)

DIGITAL CAMERA QUESTION:
Do you think it would a good idea if camera makers added a feature to the LCD display part of the camera so you could view a copy of the camera manual off the a CF card??

Thanks for your time if you read this far.

[David Metsky]

Can you upgrade your TV set, toaster, or cell phone? Consumer electronics can barely be repaired, let alone upgraded due to the way they are mass manufactured. And the support issues would be monumental.

[Rhys]

Can you upgrade your TV set, toaster, or cell phone? Consumer electronics can barely be repaired, let alone upgraded due to the way they are mass manufactured. And the support issues would be monumental.

Yes. Any consumer electronic product is the same pretty much as a car tyre. Use it until it's worn out then throw it away.

Computers can be repaired and so on but there's a limit to the amount that it's worth repairing them. For example, motherboards can take a certain amount of faster CPUs until they just can't take the speed increase. Then you need a new motherboard - which in turn means the operating system needs new drivers.

Yes. You can replace parts of a computer. heavens, i've built enough of them. Then you come across things like Dell which take funky rambus memory that nobody aside from Dell sells. My GF's computer takes rambus and I worked out that it was cheaper to toss the mainboard and cpu and rambus memory in the trash and put a new mainboard, memory and cpu in, instead. Of course, by that time, I'm talking about building virtually a new computer. I know the hard drive and CDRW are ancient and possibly due to fail soon and that the case is a bit on the small side so it then becomes more a question of buying a new computer.

Laptops are similar - parts can be changed/repaired/replaced but at the end of the day, they too are disposable. I had an IBM 760EL laptop. I made the mistake of buying it secondhand. That lasted me about 18 months before I finally threw it in the garbage. During that 18 months, my laptop (which had been sold at 1/3rd of the price of a new laptop) ended up costing me as much as I'd spent on it in spares and still gave me only old laptop performance. So that really wasn't worth buying or repairing.

TVs and toasters can be repaired. It's not possible to upgrade them though. When a mobile phone breaks and is sent off for repair, they don't repair it. They just take the case off and throw the insides away, replacing them with new insides.

Basically, any electronic item these days has one answer - if it doesn't work or needs upgrading throw it in the bin and get another.

[erichlund]

There have been attempts to do this. There was a 35mm back, but I don't recall for what brand of camera. It's much more common in the medium format world, where different camera backs were already the norm.

Unfortunately, the ccd or cmos chip is hardware, so you can't just make it bigger with software. However, most cameras can have bios updates, it's just that it is not really worth it for the camera companies to do more than fix actual problems.

Cheers,
Eric

[Samuel Lo]

There have been attempts to do this. There was a 35mm back, but I don't recall for what brand of camera. It's much more common in the medium format world, where different camera backs were already the norm.

Unfortunately, the ccd or cmos chip is hardware, so you can't just make it bigger with software. However, most cameras can have bios updates, it's just that it is not really worth it for the camera companies to do more than fix actual problems.

Cheers,
Eric

Leica really has the digital back for it's R8 and R9 camera, user can just buy it and fit it in the both of them. It's a great news, but, when you look at the price tag, you don't buy if not a Leica fans. The digital back is more expensive than any other DSLR, like 1Ds, D2X Kodak's DSCproN/C! Leica do not have it's own DSLR, so the digital back is the only choice if you want to have a Leica DSLR (R-D1 is not a DSLR)

For the medium format (120 film), there are a lot of choices of Digital back for it, and it's unified; so no matter you get a Contax, Hasselbink or Pentax, the same digital back fit all. But, BAD news: it costs you hands and legs; you can buy D2X, 1Ds and DSCproN (all of them!) for the price of one digital back! (although it's not comparable: the Digital back is usually 20MP+)

It's just like repairing the Inkjet printer - if your guarantee is over, you have to spend US$150 to repair; buying a new one may only cost US$100.

[Rhys]

There have been attempts to do this. There was a 35mm back, but I don't recall for what brand of camera. It's much more common in the medium format world, where different camera backs were already the norm.

Unfortunately, the ccd or cmos chip is hardware, so you can't just make it bigger with software. However, most cameras can have bios updates, it's just that it is not really worth it for the camera companies to do more than fix actual problems.

Cheers,
Eric

That was Rollei. I don't know the model number off hand but I remember the camera. The problem was it was a medium format camera that took 35mm film and nobody really wanted that because 35mm isn't really good enough. It fell between two stools - too expensive for most 35mm users and too low resolution for most 120/220 users.

[EAP]

Yes. Any consumer electronic product is the same pretty much as a car tyre. Use it until it's worn out then throw it away.

Please do not throw away your used consumer electronics! Recycle them!

[Rhys]

Please do not throw away your used consumer electronics! Recycle them!

That's a very laudable statement but hardly practical.

I'm in the process of moving - not just houses but countries - I've had to toss no end of electronics out. Some didn't work and some did - those that did such as NiCad chargers have no earthly use these days. Nobody uses NiCads now.

Some things such as car tyres - I wanted to send them to be recycled but all the council tips, scrapyards and recycling centres I found refused them.

Given that it's such a pain to find places that will recycle things and given that they're all over the place, it's physically impossible to take all one's rubbish to be recycled unless one wants to spend a lot of money on petrol and time driving to all the different sites. I'd say it's less environmentally friendly to drive to all the different recycling sites than simply to put them inconspicuously into a black bin bag for the dustman to take away on the dust cart.

[kgosden]

Rhys, you are moving stateside?!? If you are intending to stay in the Columbia, SC area that you've been visiting you will have no excuse not to drive the two hours to Atlanta and visit Frys one day... Somehow I know it is your kind of store.

[Rhys]

Rhys, you are moving stateside?!? If you are intending to stay in the Columbia, SC area that you've been visiting you will have no excuse not to drive the two hours to Atlanta and visit Frys one day... Somehow I know it is your kind of store.

Lol. Been to Fry's in Duluth. They had some neat stuff there. You really don't want me to try driving AND navigating, do you? I have somewhat of a reputation for being an awful navigator. My saving grace is that I'm described as a good, safe, cautious driver.

[Jredtugboat]

You just buy new lenses! :D

I bought a barrel adapter for my G2 so I could fit filters; I consider that an upgrade. As with an early-model Hyundai, I can only go so far while upgrading a P&S/all-in-one camera.

Plus there is no end of dongles, doodads and thingamajigs you can buy for your dSLR. Those aren't, to be sure, as serious an upgrade as replacing the sensor suite, but they're good enough, for me, anyway.

[ReF]

i think it all comes down to making $$$ and conveniece - for the manufacturers.
on point and shoot cameras it probably wouldn't work at all, since new models offer changes to almost every aspect of the camera, including the lens. but it really is a waste not being able to reuse something like the Canon 1D/DS series with it's alloy body, specially designed shutter blades, etc.

[Jredtugboat]

i think it all comes down to making $$$ and conveniece - for the manufacturers.
on point and shoot cameras it probably wouldn't work at all, since new models offer changes to almost every aspect of the camera, including the lens. but it really is a waste not being able to reuse something like the Canon 1D/DS series with it's alloy body, specially designed shutter blades, etc.

ReF,

I gotta agree with you there.

The thing that is stopping me from buying another all-in-one (like my G2) is the sobering fact that the manufacturers simply won't be supporting any given all-in-one 5 years from now.

It is indeed a waste to discontinue support for these first/first-and-a-half generations of dSLRs by switching everthing around after the latest product cycle. To be sure, I've been given pause for thought on my impending dSLR purchase on precisely these grounds--who wants to be stuck with unsupportable technology after you've plunked $1300 or more down on an entry-level (or even pro-series!) dSLR camera?

This really is a bummer, because I'd been thinking about purchasing this summer. But what with all the impending technology changes sure to come, I have to question the wisdom of that idea.

There's a fine line here...technology will never stop improving/changing...but at some point you've got to bite the bullet and jump in.

Any takers?

[Rhys]

ReF,

I gotta agree with you there.

The thing that is stopping me from buying another all-in-one (like my G2) is the sobering fact that the manufacturers simply won't be supporting any given all-in-one 5 years from now.

It is indeed a waste to discontinue support for these first/first-and-a-half generations of dSLRs by switching everthing around after the latest product cycle. To be sure, I've been given pause for thought on my impending dSLR purchase on precisely these grounds--who wants to be stuck with unsupportable technology after you've plunked $1300 or more down on an entry-level (or even pro-series!) dSLR camera?

This really is a bummer, because I'd been thinking about purchasing this summer. But what with all the impending technology changes sure to come, I have to question the wisdom of that idea.

There's a fine line here...technology will never stop improving/changing...but at some point you've got to bite the bullet and jump in.

Any takers?

My personal opinion is that it's only worth jumping in when you know exactly what yuo want. If you want 35mm equivalence then wait 18 months until the 12mp digitals become commonplace. The technology is almost here but not quite.

I'm personally keener on the 4/3rds system but will wait with baited breath to see whether it takes off. I prefer the 4:3 ratio because it fits paper better than 2:3 and because it fits my computer screen well too. The only downside is it's less easy to get a level horion with the 4:3 ratio - unless you have a grid in the viewfinder. Honestly, I wish all these camera companies would put a grid in on all their cameras.

[gary_hendricks]

I guess the problem with upgrading digital cameras the way you would upgrade computers is this. The complex circuitry in digital cameras is - dare I say it - not as well known as those of computers.

I come from a background where I build my own computers. I understand fully the way the motherboard, CPU, video card, sound card and what have you interconnect to produce a working system.

But I suspect that for digital cameras, the circuitry inside is not 'isolated' into separate components like the motherboard or CPU. For example, the CMOS image sensor is built right into the camera's IC.

It's not impossible, but the industry would need to somehow invent a way to 'componentize' all aspects of the digital camera to make DIY upgrades possible - the way they did for computers.

Hope I make sense? :)

[Rhys]

I guess the problem with upgrading digital cameras the way you would upgrade computers is this. The complex circuitry in digital cameras is - dare I say it - not as well known as those of computers.

I come from a background where I build my own computers. I understand fully the way the motherboard, CPU, video card, sound card and what have you interconnect to produce a working system.

But I suspect that for digital cameras, the circuitry inside is not 'isolated' into separate components like the motherboard or CPU. For example, the CMOS image sensor is built right into the camera's IC.

It's not impossible, but the industry would need to somehow invent a way to 'componentize' all aspects of the digital camera to make DIY upgrades possible - the way they did for computers.

Hope I make sense? :)


The problem with componantising and standardisation is that somebody will always want to buck the trend. Look at the computer industry for example - only with IBM and Microsoft as the major player will standards remain relatively stable.

We have a diversification within the PC industry that gives everybody headaches as the standards are now multiplying. Look at motherboards - we have evolved from the AT board to the ATX and now we have micro-ATX. Then there are the 64-bit boards as well. Look at memory - DDR memory has many standards - 2100, 3100 etc. Dell uses rambus memory which is different again and hence terribly expensive.

AA batteries were a standard that everybody recognised, knew and loved. Now all these manufacturers are trying to screw ever more money from the public by producing their own funky batteries. Manufacuturers like to keep selling ever better sensors. If they made cameras that they could change the sensors in, they'd sell less cameras and more new sensors. They'd not make as much money. Business is profit driven and they're in business to screw as much money from the public as they can while giving the public as little as possible in return. Then they raise the stakes a little by offering a perceived advantage through which they screw even more money from the public.

While Capitalism exists, the industry has no incentive to componantise further. Look at the shabby way Nikon treated its MF customers as an example. Pentax managed to produce a digital camera without ailianating its MF customers. It is a possibility but capitalism and greed ensures that that's all it remains.

[Ray Schnoor]

If they made cameras that they could change the sensors in, they'd sell less cameras and more new sensors. They'd not make as much money. Business is profit driven and they're in business to screw as much money from the public as they can while giving the public as little as possible in return. Then they raise the stakes a little by offering a perceived advantage through which they screw even more money from the public.

This may be so, but if they were to make a camera with an upgradeable sensor, who's to say they wouldn't charge the same (or almost the same) amount as for a new camera, thus receiving more profit, not less?

It seems to me that it is more a problem with size and/or not being able to just change the sensor. To make an interchangeable sensor viable for enough of the public to be interested in actually changing it (and therefore economically feasable), it would have to be in some sort of module that you snap into place instead of having it soldered into the camera, thus adding extra size to the camera. Additionally, you would have to make the camera housing easy to open which would mean adding clips or some other type of mechanism to open/close the housing (making the housing even more bulky). All of this would of course have to be done while trying to keep dust/fingerprints off of the new sensor.

I know that there are several of you out there that wouldn't hesitate to open your camera to make this swap, but I am guessing that the vast majority of camera users have never even opened the housing of their desktop computer to add/replace new or improved equipment.

If the above weren't enough to not provide this type of sensor, it also seems to me that the more expensive camera you have, the internal processing power of your camera also increases. If this were not the case, an entry level 2MP camera would be much faster shot-to-shot than say a top of the line 5-8MP pro-sumer camera since filesize increases. Since the more expensive cameras are faster, this leads me to believe that these cameras have more "horsepower" under the hood to handle the larger images. Upgrading the sensor on a 2MP camera to a 5MP sensor, would then make the camera slower, with the result of infuriating the camera owner who was probably already complaining about the wait in between shots.

I have a feeling that greed is not the reason interchangeable sensors are not available. I am sure that camrea manufacturers don't want to hear complaints from Rhys that his 2-4MP(?) Nikon point and shoot is not as fast between shots now that he as added a new 16 MP sensor.

[Jredtugboat]

The problem with componantising and standardisation is that somebody will always want to buck the trend. Look at the computer industry for example - only with IBM and Microsoft as the major player will standards remain relatively stable.

We have a diversification within the PC industry that gives everybody headaches as the standards are now multiplying. Look at motherboards - we have evolved from the AT board to the ATX and now we have micro-ATX. Then there are the 64-bit boards as well. Look at memory - DDR memory has many standards - 2100, 3100 etc. Dell uses rambus memory which is different again and hence terribly expensive.

AA batteries were a standard that everybody recognised, knew and loved. Now all these manufacturers are trying to screw ever more money from the public by producing their own funky batteries. Manufacuturers like to keep selling ever better sensors. If they made cameras that they could change the sensors in, they'd sell less cameras and more new sensors. They'd not make as much money. Business is profit driven and they're in business to screw as much money from the public as they can while giving the public as little as possible in return. Then they raise the stakes a little by offering a perceived advantage through which they screw even more money from the public.

While Capitalism exists, the industry has no incentive to componantise further. Look at the shabby way Nikon treated its MF customers as an example. Pentax managed to produce a digital camera without ailianating its MF customers. It is a possibility but capitalism and greed ensures that that's all it remains.

Blaming capitalism and greed will usually win points with me, but not here.

The lure of pop-in LRU technology is strong. I'd love my G2 to be able to take a series of upgradeable sensors.

On the other hand, what would motivate a company to introduce such far-seeing technology? Canon could lock me up for a good long while if my 4MP camera was suddenly able to turn into an 8mp all in one--as it is, I'm flirting with Konica Minolta and Nikon.

Perhaps it would be a motivation to meet my demand as a customer. This would require a drive, ambition, and culture of greed and capitalism that you impugn. Admittedly, it's possible to conceive of economies that would meet my demand, but if we're going to wax philosophical, then creating really good cameras is probably not going to be on that society's list of demands, unless it's run by you.

Anyway, the standardisation that you like is created and maintained by people like...IBM and Microsoft. Not exactly paragons of alternative economic excellence. When AA won out as a standard, I'm sure other dry cell standards were driven completely out in the process, and I'm sure somebody or two lost a job along the way.

As far as computers go, the motherboard standards aren't as confusing as you suggest. Legwork and reading can keep you upgrading your computer for a good while longer, certainly longer than I can upgrade my toaster or my walkman, my television set, my computer monitor, my box-spring mattress, my keyboard, my tape dispenser, my DVD player, my stereo, printer, step ladder, and any number of items that clog my life.

For that matter, I can't upgrade anything that really matters to me: my photo albums (physical, not virtual!), my comic books, or my books. Joan Didion's "Goodbye to all that" and John McPhee's "Oranges" are as good as they're ever going to be, period, and the time will come when I look at them and say, "Sam Hill, that's some dated stuff right there."

Anyway, lest you think I'm just being a smart aleck, I've been using the same Athlon system now for coming up on six years and aside from not being able to play the latest video games I'm doing all right. Along the way I've replaced memory (several times), upgraded the hard drives twice, added a USB 2.0 controller, bought a new sound and video card, replaced the CD-ROM and the DVD player, and dealing with ATX, mini-ATX and the like never made the least difference to me.

[Jredtugboat]

This may be so, but if they were to make a camera with an upgradeable sensor, who's to say they wouldn't charge the same (or almost the same) amount as for a new camera, thus receiving more profit, not less?

Ray,

This is a great point.

The only way to make this all work would be to sell an "imaging package", complete with the sensor and the associated circuitry. Just having a new sensor wouldn't work.

This all assumes some things; I can think of two off the bat: You get your engineers to agree upon a standard for all given cameras of a certain class. You agree to engineer all future sensor packages to this standard for a certain number of years. (This is, I would think, already done to some extent, just as a manner of controlling costs. Not to the end, however, of packaging sensor packages as upgrades.)

Since imaging sensors are changing, and themselves have a lot of room yet to grow I bet that this is no mean feat, and requires time all out of sync for the demands of the marketing and sales departments and their pushes.