Originally posted by RobA_Oz I’d love it to be realised some day, but I’m not expecting it.
A sad story, related to this: we used to have a great camera store here, from which I and my family purchased many items over a long time, from the 1960s through to the 1990s. The staff were all helpful, longtime employees who really knew their stuff, and it was a family-run business over a couple of generations. Sadly, the last owner dismissed the start of the digital revolution, but thought that a product he saw at Fotokina would make digital bodies redundant. That product was quite like re35 – in all respects, but mostly as vapourware. Needless to say, the business was gone within a couple of years. Twenty years on, we’re still waiting.
But, it’s a nice idea.
It's a shame when family businesses like that one close. We've a few non-photographic family-run shops and services still operating in my town, but they're having an increasingly-difficult time making them pay... and the current economic situation - post pandemic and now the energy crisis - won't help. Just the other day, I noticed that an auto parts shop about a mile from me had finally closed. It had been there since well before I was even born. It was open 7 days a week, and stocked just about every generic auto part you could need, many common brand- and model-specific parts, tools, consumables, paint, etc. Anything he didn't have in stock, he'd get in within a week - and his prices were always very fair. I kept my first two cars running with nothing more than a Haynes manual and parts / tools from that shop. Sad to see it's gone
Re the "digital film cartridge" idea, it seems there are two key problems - (1) thickness of the sensor and whatever it's mounted to, and (2) integration of with the camera's shutter release and shutter and mechanism to control start and end of exposure. Even if the sensor thickness issue were surmountable, I'm not sure it would be possible to come up with a one-size-fits-all approach to shutter integration... I'd like to think someone, somewhere is working on it, though