Video maker tries to make old camera and old lenses work with Raspberry Pi

A video maker has tried to convert an old camera into a Raspberry Pi camera with old c-mount lenses on it. The project was partly successful: the camera works, but a keyboard is needed to take a picture via command-line.

The video maker, Becca Farsace of The Verge, used the housing of a Ninoka NK-700 camera, a 35mm camera that was in production more than 40 years ago. The camera has a Raspberry Pi 4 with HQ Camera Mod. That module has a c-mount and a Sony IMX477 sensor with a size of 1/2.3 “and a diagonal of 7.9 mm. The resolution is 12 megapixels. On the back is a 3.5 “touch screen that is made is for the Raspberry Pi. The camera works without a power supply by connecting a 10Ah power bank.

The camera works and can take pictures with a button on the housing. But the project was not entirely successful. A Python script for taking pictures with a selfie stick produced images in low resolution, so it turned out to be necessary to take pictures with a wireless keyboard using the commandline tool raspistill.