Pix of your home-built cams here please

[argus]

Cute. How do you time exposures?

A packard shutter is on its way to daddy. I built the front box large enough to accommodate it.

Up till then, I'll use paper since the film has not arrived yet.

G

[argus]

Lightweight 4x5" field camera (1615 gram). I made the camera to have a light and compact field camera for our trip to Bretagne (starting next wednesday). To keep the weight down, I evaluated all movements that I use a lot and decided to limit movements to keep the weight down.

I promise this will be the last camera I will build this year.

It is built out of oak and aluminium and includes:
- friction lock focussing
- rotating back
- rear and front tilt, back twist and front rise/fall
The bellows is made out of bookbinders linen/leatherette. It turns out to be a bit on the stiff side.

Building time: about 2 weeks. I think I'm getting a hand of it

The camera is here shown both with a Schneider Symmar convertible, both focussed at 1500mm and 265mm.

[Steve Smith]

I promise this will be the last camera I will build this year.

Don't worry. Only another five and a half months to go!!

Steve.

[Steve Smith]

Looks really good.

I have built one 5x4" camera which I am fairly pleased with but it does not fold up. It is my intention to build a lightweight folding camera like this one fairly soon. Did you build from plans (are they available anywhere?) or do you use my method of designing whilst building?

Steve.

[photomc]

How embarrassing...a photo of it sitting on the scales, for the whole world to see

Nice job on both cameras...so which format is next?

[scootermm]

wish I could get argus to make me a 12x20



well done argus. yet again.

[Christopher Colley]

I sure feel humbled by some of the creations here!

but, here is my 4x10 pinhole camera made from a modified Compact Disk Box Set..


inside the camera with paper negative inside.. http://blog.depressing.org/archives/inside2-thumb.jpg

front of camera showing the shutter and 'lens' http://blog.depressing.org/archives/3-thumb.jpg

rear of camera showing its snazzy looks! http://blog.depressing.org/archives/open-thumb.jpg

only good for one shot at a time!

due to the racks that used to hold CD's this camera also works great for 4x5 sheet film which fits snugly against the rear of the camera..

http://images.depressing.org/art/115...1d25baf341.jpg one of the 4x10 shots on ilford MGIV RC glossy paper negative, printed on mgIV fb

http://images.depressing.org/art/191...1d23d16cbe.jpg a 100% crop of the above image (from a 300dpi scan of the print) to show the relative sharpness

http://blog.depressing.org/archives/kitchen.jpg 4x5 image from the same camera using a different lens that is less sharp..

[Dan Fromm]

Hmm. Its hard to judge sharpness from small digitized images, but yours are sharper than I'd have have expected. How did you choose the pinhole's size?

Remember, if a home-made camera does what you want, it isn't ugly.

Cheers,

Dan

[Christopher Colley]

How did you choose the pinhole's size?
Cheers,

Dan

I worked with the camera for over a year and built many many pinholes until I was able to get one that appeared 'sharp enough' i.e. very small

[barryjyoung]

If you are geek minded like some of us,,,,maybe not me,,,you can find a fascinating discussion (With cartoons) of how to determine correct pinhole size from an engineers perspective at:

http://photondetector.com/blog/2006/03/28/pinhole-size/

You have to download the .pdf file to see it. It is for guys with calculator holsters, but maybe the rest of us can glean something from it.

As far as I know there are two age old formulae for determining pinhole size.

.0073 times the square root of the focal length (I use this one and it works well for focal legths near the same length as the diagonal of the film).

The other is Lord Rayleighs formula 1.9 times the square root of the focal length times the wavelength of light you want to bring to focus at that focal length.

But then, why not just go to :

http://www.pinhole.cz/en/pinholedesigner/

and let the computer do all those nast calculations for you?