"For comunication, Mr. Lichter mentioned a "micro-tether" that comes out from the internal cartidge, under the back without compromizing the light seal. I sure hope he protects this in some way.
The rest I can only guess on. (because I didn't ask) The original 1.3 Mp unit was self contained including batteries and memory (enough for 24 1.3mp shots). Since then memory storage has been moved to a CF card inserted in the base unit along with the batteries. If that is true, that space could be used to house the buffer memory in the cartridge and power brought to the cartridge via the micro-tether. I would assume (dangerous thing to do) that the CCD is turned on via the base unit and would capture the image upon shutter release, sending it to the CF memory when the film advance mechanism triggers a sensor. While there may be no shutter lag, there may be a short "boot-up" period like other digitals. Just a thought... in-camera digital double exposures." JoSlotz I am still a little concerned about this 'micro-tether' both in terms of fragility and sealing for the camera, but I can see there is no other way it could sensibly work. > -----Original Message----- > From: Tom Sapienza [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: 17 September 2002 18:21 > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: RE: Silicon Film is still alive... (??????) > > > > I have just looked on their website and a few important > details seem > > to be missing from the product info. How exactly does the 'film' > > insert communicate to the external viewer? In order for > there to be no > > modifications required to the camera, presumably you need a > wireless > > connection of some sort (bluetooth?). There is no sign of a cable > > connecting the devices, and that would make a mess of the > camera seals > > if they had one, surely. That being the case, how is the internal > > unit powered? There is mention of 4*AA batteries but this is > > presumably for the viewer as they would not fit inside the internal > > unit. > > Yes, I wondered about how the connectivity from the inside to > the outside works as well, but none of their tech sheets had > info, nor did any other information on the web I could find. > > > Also, how does the unit know when the shutter has fired and what > > shutter speed is to be used? Does it constantly 'look' for a light > > source and when one is found power up the CCD? or is the CCD > > permanently warmed ready for use? Does this represent a > power drain of > > some sort? > > Presumably, if the internal bit can send information to the > external bit, it can probably receive settings such as film > speed and what-not, too. > > Older websites give more information: > (May 2001) > http://www.imaging-resource.com/NEWS/989073052.html > Describes a little box to which you offload images after > shooting 24 shots. > http://www.ideinc.com/silfilmright.html Talks about how it was designed specifically (at first, hopefully ...) to fit the "top 5 amateur SLR cameras". http://www.idsa.org/whatis/seewhat/idea2001/winners/S8056.htm Here's a closeup of what they thought the box into which your dump your pictures was going to look like. http://www.imaging-resource.com/EVENTS/PMAS01/982172823.html Some example pictures taken with the silicon film. Sorry for the glut of links, but after hearing about this today I went looking for all the info I could find, and though some other might find it interesting.
