Modding an Olympus E-500

[ixalon]

Hi all,

Just won myself an Olympus E-500 to mod on eBay for £90... seemed like a bargain for a Kodak KAF-8300CE sensor!

I'm hoping to strip the filters (maybe keep the anti-dust one) and add a peltier cooler to the CCD.

Ideally I'd like to keep it somewhat neat, stripping away as much of the camera as possible and placing everything in a nice aluminium case (for that Atik look!)

One annoying thing seems to be that it can't be powered from the mains, but I'm hoping that if I tear it apart I can connect a suitable 7.4V DC supply in place of the battery.

Fingers crossed!

[Psychobilly]

It does indeed good luck with the mod

Any modding guides out there for it?

Peter...

[ixalon]

Thanks!

I found this (mod for IR-only photography) for the E-300 which is apparently very similar:

digital-photography.pl » ArtykuÅ‚y » Olympus E-300 IR - converting the camera to infrared

There's also a yahoo group, but nobody there seems to have braved doing it themselves:

Olympus_Digital_SLR_Astrophotography : Olympus Digital SLR Astrophotography

[Psychobilly]

The first one seems to have all the info you need when it coems to diassembly and re-assembly

Have fun

Peter...

[barkis]

I own an Olympue E-500, and I use a regulated power supply for it.

I bought the dry cell battery case for the camera, and soldered the DC Supply from the psu to it. Works fine.

With bits Psychobilly supplied, I did the same thing for my Canon 1000D.

Ron.

[ixalon]

That's great news Ron, thanks. Will hunt one down, or solder a DC jack directly to the camera.

[EA2007]

just make sure the thing can expose for longer than a minute at any ISO's higher than 400, otherwise your in for a lot of fun especially if you have a slow focal ratio on your scope.

I had the E-400 and it didn't allow for long exposures, i would maybe assume that the E-500 is maybe the same.

[Psychobilly]

Looks like the 60s limit applies to any of the "auto" modes and theres an 8min limit for Bulb exposures...

From the Olympus E-500 specs page.....

Shutter speed Auto, P, Ps, A mode: 1/4000 – 60 sec. (depend on conditions)

S mode: 1/4000 – 60 sec.

M mode: 1/4000 – 60 sec. and bulb (up to 8 min.)

Scene mode: 1/4000 – 2 sec .

Peter...

[EA2007]

yeah, but the 8 minutes is only for an ISO of 100 which for imaging is useless.

the exposure ability decreases with higher ISO's

from what I remember it went something like this:

ISO 100: 8 minutes

ISO 200: 4 minutes

ISO 400: 2 minutes

ISO 800: 1 minute

ISO 1000: 1 minute

ISO 1600: 1 minute

[ixalon]

Got the camera body today (when they said "body only" they really meant it... not even a front cap!)

Will try it out tomorrow... if there are such limitations, hopefully Maxim DL's driver can work around it.

[Psychobilly]

Ah they didnt mention that on the specs page

I cant really see how maxim would be able to overide it either ...

Peter...

[ixalon]

Phew, just done some testing - the E500 supports 8 minute exposures on all ISO levels, tested upto ISO 1600. Unfortunately they kindly upgraded the firmware to v1.3 so it doesn't have the ISO 3200 hack.

[EA2007]

nice one, good purchase then.

the E-400 i had was fine for daytime imaging. just night time shots weren't that accessible.

good luck.

[ixalon]

Well, I finally got some time to start on this over the weekend.

A nice surprise is that using PC tethered remote shooting, you can get ISO 3200 and that the removal of the filter was easier enough. The sensor itself is mounted on an aluminium heatsink that has some convenient holes that look like good points to attach a cold finger.

My next challenge is stripping the camera down to the minimum possible. Seems like it needs quite a bit of the original circuitry to function. Remote shooting requires selecting a menu item on startup (i.e. you need the buttons on the back of the camera and the LCD display). Also, without the shutter mechanism you get error "D: 5C81".

With the shutter mechanism connected, but not physically connected to the motor, it will take an exposure, but will crash when it tries to close the shutter at the end of the exposure. Looks like it uses sensors to check the shutter opened/closed correctly which could be a pain to work around.

[Psychobilly]

Good news.. this will be one to watch I think

Peter...

[ixalon]

Dusted off this project this weekend (literally)!

Got hold of a 3mm thick sheet of copper this weekend for a cold finger. Just need to get hold of a metal cutting dremel bit so I can shape it. Also going to use it to make a frame to hold the shutter motor to the shutter assembly. Then I can get rid of the rather bulky mirror box (which usually holds them in place), making the sensor within about 15mm from the mount face.

Also put together a simple 7.5V voltage regulator so the camera can be powered off the mount's 12V supply. What a handy little circuit!

[ixalon]

IX8300 Mk I is done :-)

Specs:

• Kodak KAF8300 8MP colour sensor
  
• IR-cut filter removed
  
• Sensor dust removal mechanism still in place
  
• Peltier cooling to around 15C below ambient
  
• Single 12V in
  
• Canon EF mount
  
• Mount to CCD surface around 14mm
  
• Optical compartment isolated from fan compartment
  
• Silica desiccant in optical compartment
  
• Much fun been had building this
  

Some pics:

The main problems it has are:

• Balance - it's pretty balanced across the short side of the box, but is top heavy
  
• Cooling is not as efficient as it could be
  
• No space for an in-camera shutter
  

I'm not too worried about the lack of shutter. I can always use a blocked out filter wheel space to keep the sensor dark during read-out to avoid any smearing.

The solution to this (for Mk II) is to remove the KAF8300 from the main board and attach it directly to the peltier/heatsink/fan assembly, and connect with a ribbon cable (I wasn't that brave for Mk I). This should give me the flexibility to align everything with the optical axis to keep everything balanced.

However, I'm pretty pleased with how it's turned out so far. Just need some clear skies now so I can give it a spin.

Some example darks at different temperatures to come...

[ixalon]

And some 60s darks, all shot at ISO1600 (camera is capable of ISO3200 but only had Olympus Studio at hand which is limited to ISO1600).

These are 800x600 crops of the same area of RAW frames at native resolution with all noise-reduction disabled.

The temperature was measured on the copper cold finger, at the join with the aluminium heatsink below the sensor. Given more patience, the sensor temperature could probably be lowered further.

16C:

5C:

-10C:

I'm really keen to get this temperature down further!

[Coco]

super stuff.... am definitely watching the progress here..

[Catanonia]

Nice work there mate, and shows how much cooling helps.

[yesyes]

Hey, that looks like a proper DIY job. I like the buttons. hey look important...

What I don't get is the dark frames you posted. Why are the red and blue noisy pixels so big? Shouldn't they just be single pixels?

[malc-c]

I own the same camera - but as I want to use it for everyday photography don't want to strip it down like you have. I also noticed a lot of noise when taking wide field shots of the sky with a standard lens, but I'm amazed that you've had to chill it down so much and still get noise. What (other than price) is the difference between using the sensor from a DSLR and the commercially available cameras dedicated to imaging, or do they also suffer similar noise (random pixel fireing ?)

[ixalon]

What I don't get is the dark frames you posted. Why are the red and blue noisy pixels so big? Shouldn't they just be single pixels?

I'm puzzled about that too. But there's other images from different cameras that show the same effect (e.g. Clarkvision.com: Digital Camera Long Exposure Time Noise and Dark Current Comparisons) so I think it's "normal".

Edit: Also, this chap has similar noise on the same camera: http://www.wrotniak.net/photo/43/e500-noise.html#fixed

[ixalon]

I own the same camera - but as I want to use it for everyday photography don't want to strip it down like you have. I also noticed a lot of noise when taking wide field shots of the sky with a standard lens, but I'm amazed that you've had to chill it down so much and still get noise. What (other than price) is the difference between using the sensor from a DSLR and the commercially available cameras dedicated to imaging, or do they also suffer similar noise (random pixel fireing ?)

I think the commercial cooled CCD cameras user higher grade sensors, however if left uncooled and unprocessed they'd show similar noise? The shots above are pushing the sensitivity of this camera. There's less noise at lower ISO settings (but then longer exposures are needed).

Anyone with a proper KAF8000-powered camera willing to post an uncooled 60s dark at the highest sensitivity level?

[ixalon]

A proper KAF8300 is on its way so I can compare (and resell if my DIY job can eventually come up to scratch!)

Out of interest, I just repeated the 60s ISO 1600 at 16C test with a Canon 5D Mk II (it's amazing how low noise recent DSLRs are):

Again, this is a 800x600 crop at native resolution of a RAW image, with all noise reduction turned off. You can see the same sort of noise (red, blue and white dots of varying size), just much, much less of it.

I'm amazed at the difference - I wondering if the circuitry on the E-500 is causing a lot of noise, or if I've somehow damaged it?