well,
i was wondering if any one had used the fibreopticinverters to flip the image 180 Deg. like,placing them on the LCD screen for instance. i believe they are not worth using them inside the adapter to do the flipping. but can be tried on the LCD screen
check this.
http://www.szlaser.com/inverter.htm

to my knowledge there was a post about the optic fibre prism (well, i dont remember exactly in which thread though) in this alternative image forum, where some guy asked whether he can use such a prism for some purpose and someone else replied that the image on the other end of the prism is not good because it is limited by the no of fibres packed ... i searched but couldnt find out from the no of results. does any one remember.

thanks
krishna

sounds interesting. big questions though.

light loss? resolution? price?

if it meets all of those (low light loss, high res, relatively low price), then i'm sold.

Yes, very interesting.

I was looking at these (http://home.comcast.net/~mwaltuck/Tapermag/), wondering if they could be used as a focusing screen. If the two methods (tapering and twisting) could be combined, that would be even better...

Regardless of other issues, it would probably be perfect for inverting the eyepiece for those who can not modify their camera! Good find! I bet it would be useful for other things as well. Does anybody have one?

Marcus

P.S. There seem to be devices called Image Intensifiers. Could these be used to increase the light input into the camera? I wouldn't mind gaining an f-stop.

I used a couple of them, and believe or not, maybe they are usefull for reading when your eyes are already screwed up but nothing else.They are not as fantastic as manufacturers tell you...

Wonder if you tried putting this directly on your ccd block. With 2.3x magnification your 1/3" should act like a little bigger than a 2/3". Not a 35mm frame but getting closer.

Having a feeling their is significant lightloss because of these and don't have a clue what you should use as the focal plane, likely the front of the optical taper.

keith,
when i first saw the info in the following link i thought, wow some one already put a taper to a CCD, just as u said.
http://patents.globalspec.com/engineering-search/patents/abstract/128851094089/Frame_for_a_fiber_optic_taper

but after searching for the full patent info at uspto.gov, i realised that it is used for ccd's in X-ray detectors. dont know how it would perform for a normal CCD. interesting idea though.

here is the uspto link for the full description
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,913,398.WKU.&OS=PN/6,913,398&RS=PN/6,913,398

That particular patent is for a particular method for bonding a taper to a CCD. The practise itself seems fairly common - just type "fiber optic taper ccd" into Google and see.

That's the most desirable way of doing it, of course, but for us "home brewers", I think that using the taper the other way around might be useful - you wouldn't have to zoom the camcorder as much, so the "business end" could be closer to the camcorder, meaning that more of the light would make its way into the camcorder lens.

Schott offer bundles with resolution up to 144 line pairs/mm, and their lowest quoted resolution is still 24 line pairs/mm which should be enough for SD.

If nothing else, a fiber optic faceplate seems like a good possible candidate for a static "ground glass".

Imagine the gain on a 2/3" ccd assembly. It would definetly bring you close to what people what to get the DOF effect.

Probably easiest to try a setup with a canon XL camera since you can get access to the ccd block easily without dissasembly. I'd try but don't have an XL1 at my disposal easily