Originally posted by stevebrot Yes, the article mentions the biggest problems which still remains when you want to keep the same form factor, traditional sized film body: The sensor needs to be thin and with smallest possible border, open to elements and careful positioning. Can be done only with pressure plate removed and use the metal back as heatsink (which means no wifi can get out, too). That's doable, as well as using today's advanced and more cheaper sensors which have much of the support electronics integrated directly on chip (A/D conversion, some memory, perhaps even basic controller). Engineer would connect it with simple flex cable and route it to film cartridge space but that makes it even more fragile and hard to use - align properly.
Connection is second biggest problem and I wonder if electronically controlled shutter is better than mechanical one, if you can hack signals on cameras like K2 or ME Super, then you have simple system: metering start gets the digital add-on to powered stand by, shutter control signals starts and stops exposure. Image is nowadays saved faster than you can wind next frame, no problems there. Auto powers down after metering stops and without large display even small battery can last long time, more than 36 frames. You have frankencamera like the Epson R-D1 where shutter is cocked clasically by mechanical action but the rest is electronic. Manual focus stays the same, at worst you have to calibrate the sensor's position somehow. Interfacing K1000 is more tough as you need to use flash sync somehow and power up the sensor + electronics before shot, perhaps hack the metering system to use it when the cap is off and enough light level comes to the meter.
The practical problem is high cost with large sensor and small series dedicated hardware which even needs camera specific design. No one will finance the development. Even the new Reflex film camera (I'm one of the backers) barely got over the minimum funding and that's far away from what's needed to have profitable model for all those set up costs, that's why they needed another investor to have at least thousand high production run. I noticed someone mentioned somewhere plans for digital version but I haven't seen any concrete plans and it will be still quite hard even when approached as complete new, bottom-up design.
All in all I believe it's technically possible but needs a lot of funding from millionaire which has film cameras as main hobby
Edit: One brave adventurer can also hack already made product in destructive way, see the compact Sony ILCE QX1 but it's only APS-C.
---------- Post added 10-22-18 at 03:32 PM ----------
Originally posted by LesDMess Not yet as I still don't have a Minolta SR2 . . .
Heh, I got two but they need more CLA than even the most beaten up for-parts K1000 I snagged off eBay. One starts to wonder that buying cheap cameras to later investigate and repair yourself isn't really worth it and that better way is to have one (or couple, at most...) expensive but recently professionally serviced. Quality over quantity, you know. Having couple stress free years of use even with rock bottom grade camera like the K1000 was can justify the high price in the end.