# Nikon Patents Digital Back



## Lawrence (Mar 11, 2003)

Nikon Patents Digital Back, Shame It Will Never Happen


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## eMacMan (Nov 27, 2006)

Seems to me one could design a sensor/SDcard in a film canister. Would not give you a digital back as such but you would then be able to use any SLR as a digital camera. Perhaps the canister could be removed and attached to a small digital display when one needs to review images more or less on the fly.


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## Niteshooter (Aug 8, 2008)

Interesting wonder how old that patent is. For those who own a film EOS 1 those gold contacts were potentially for a digital back, Canon mentions this in a dealer sales guide but it also never materialized.

A digital film can would be the most clever solution and over the years many have been prototyped but never made it to market. Today we have the memory, cpu horsepower and battery capacity/size to actually do something like that which produced half decent file sizes and IQ.


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## Kleles (Jul 21, 2009)

I agree, it probably won't happen. Nikon would have to price it high enough to not cut into their DSL line. The potential sales volume would not merit the R&D and production costs. Also, even though there are millions of old film cameras lying around in closets and drawers, they don't last forever - they're machines after all. Lens technology also continues to improve. Most legacy lenses are probably technically out of date.


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