NikonWeb.com

Hi,

Well, those that follow the other half of this site already know, but I'm now out of the Nikon E-series gear club, having passed all my variuos gear unto another forum member.

I'm not done with the Kodak DCS stuff, though. Not by a long shot. My main camera has been a DCS 560 for several years now, having gone somewhat backwards to that from a Canon 1Ds mk-I. I find that the slightly smaller format CCD works better for me, especially with the colors I can work up from the Kodak sensor.

However, my lens kit consists mostly of Nikon auto and manual focus prime lenses. I use them on the Canon body with an adapter, along with a few Leica and Zeiss/Contax manual lenses. This works, but I do get tired of shooting using stop-down metering all the time. I have a couple Canon EF zooms, but more often than not I prefer to use the older manual focus primes.

So, now that I have emptied my shelf of Nikon E-series gear for some cash, I can now go out and pick up a Kodak DCS 760 to add to the 560. While the 760 is an improvement over the 660, which is identical to the 560 except for the body stuck on the front end, the main draw of the 760 is that I get to hang the Nikon prime lenses onto an F5 body and so can once again work with automatic stop-down shooting!

Once I find myself a nice 760, I think I'll go looking for a 720x just because sometimes I do need higher ISO than the 6 MP bodies provide. Not often, but these older Kodak bodies are getting cheap enough that I can justify having at least one hi-ISO unit on the shelf.

Ah, what fun!

Later!

Stan

_________________
Amateur Photographer
Professional Electronics Development Engineer

Hi,

Oh, I forgot. I may also buy up a at least a couple dead DCS units to open up and see what's in there. I have this idea that the Kodak designs lend themselves to repair more readily than anything else. There's often dead DCS units on eBay for real cheap and, who knows?, I might figure out how to repair them.

Later!

Stan

_________________
Amateur Photographer
Professional Electronics Development Engineer

Stan: If you have not found this link, you might enjoy looking at the inside of a 760 before you tear one apart-
http://qman.fotokala.ee/Kaamerad/DCS760/index.html

I have found the Kodak DCS 620,660, 760 to eminently agreeable to exploration, even F5 body transplanting(which is much easier than shutter replacement if the shutter died on your DCS). Just need to be careful about ribbon connectors at the "wind"side, if/when removing the back(after grip removal) to avoid tearing a very non-replaceable ribbon that goes deep into the F5).
Cheers,
phi47

Sounds like fun. Please let us not what you learn by taking them a apart. Maybe you can figure out how to upgrade them.

Hi,

Yes, these are really easy to work on, unlike anything else out there. I've already done the body transplant thing on the 560, and I've had a 660 or two apart as well making one good one out of two bad ones. We're fortunate in that Kodak sold a lot of these, and they sell cheap these days.

I don't know about upgrading, though. I'd love to put the 10 MP 16-bit D/R Kodak sensor into one of these older units - I'm really not wanting to go the whole Leica route - but I'm certain it's not as easy as swapping the sensor chip.

I think we're forever into the role of keeping some of them going by sacrificing others. That's OK, though!

Later!

Stan

_________________
Amateur Photographer
Professional Electronics Development Engineer

Thanks for the update.
Have you every replaced a scsi connector or a flash card reader one one?