1004 CAMERA

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The 1004 camera can be modified to take long exposures by altering the circuit and adding a control and interface board to enable the exposures to be controlled from a computer. I am indebted to Jon Grove for his fine work on developing this and for publishing the details on his web-site here. That is the place to go if you intend to carry out the mod; these pages here simply record the mod as carried out by me to my camera. Note - the components on the board are very small so the work should not be undertaken unless you are familiar with this type of construction e.g. by practicing first on a dead board with similar size components. You will, of course, immediately invalidate your guarantee and possibly ruin the camera - so, go carefully.

Here's the circuit diagram showing how the relay board is linked to the 1004 board and the parallel port on a computer. Click on the image for a larger version. There's also a Veroboard layout for this.

The changes are made on the back of the board shown here, except for cutting a leg of the CCD on the front . Instead of cutting the leg, the track can be cut on the front of the board if you find that easier.

Here's the 1004 in its box I made earlier (see here). There's not much room for the additional circuitry - a larger box is definitely recommended ! Hindsight is a wonderful science !.

Work in progress - I've cut the  track to pin 5 of the Sony I.C. and soldered 2 fine wires to the pin and the other side of the track after the cut. The wires were held down with epoxy glue and thicker wire soldered to them. There are 3 more wires to be added on this side and one from the severed leg of the CCD on the front . All are glued down for safety.

The size and shape of the p.c.board was dictated by the available space in the box (just enough). The 3 sub-miniature relays just fitted down the left-hand side leaving the 7406 IC to overhang the main board. I drew the tracks onto the blank p.c.b. with a fine water-proof marker-pen and etched it in the normal way with Ferric Chloride solution. It was then cleaned and drilled.

Here's the board after the components had been soldered on. There are 3 diodes which protect the I.C. from the back e.m.f of the relays - they are soldered on the other side of the board purely for space reasons. The 5v regulator is at the bottom of the board. All the wires from the camera board are soldered to their pads on this board once it's in position.

A 6 pin mini-DIN socket was fitted in the top-right of the box to connect it to the computer and all the various connections made to the relay board. A lead was made with a mini-DIN plug on one end and a 25way D plug on the other for the computer. For testing I've screwed in the original small lens before later removing it and refitting the front mirror and lens assembly.

When the mod had been made, the camera no longer works in 'normal' mode unless connected to the computer and the program run to set the relays correctly. The camera is controlled from the computer via its parallel port using a program produced by Jon Grove called 'iCatch' - available for downloading from his site. This allows you to set the time and number of exposures and captures the long-exposure frames in an .AVI movie file for subsequent processing. The camera video output enters the computer via a TV card with video input (I'm using a Hauppauge Win TV Go board) and the long exposure frames are then captured  in the iCatch program for subsequent manipulation in a program like K3ccdtools for example.