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Connecting a Minolta SR-T 101 to a VR Headset In Order to Experience Reality Through A Camera

Started Apr 19, 2017 | Discussions thread
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mattbierner
mattbierner New Member • Posts: 4
Connecting a Minolta SR-T 101 to a VR Headset In Order to Experience Reality Through A Camera
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For a recent experiment, I hooked a Minolta SRT 101 to a Google Cardboard VR headset in order to experience the world as a camera. The view that you see while wearing the device more or less matches what would be captured on film.

Links

The device itself is fairly simple. A Raspberry Pi streams video from the Minolta SR-T 101's viewfinder to an iPhone used in a Google Cardboard headset. The PI is powered by a battery pack attached to the bottom of the Minolta and the streaming is over wifi, so the entire thing is self contained

Wearing the headset, the image quality is terrible, but it does capture the look and feel of using an old film camera. Besides seeing the world through a handheld device, the most interesting effect for me was being able to manually control the focusing of my vision and see the world with bokeh and depth of field effects

I also found the experience while wearing the device to be similar to a normal photoshoot, but almost amplified in a strange way. It really does make you see the world differently.

Overall, the experience was certainly unique and creating the device itself was an interesting adventure. You can find much more about the device and the experience of using it on my blog

Let me know if you have any questions about the project or any thoughts on experiment in a similar vein

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