Pix of your home-built cams here please

[nick mulder]

hiya,

we don’t all have access to the tech gallery so I thought it would be nice to have a thread here where we can upload snaps of our home-built cameras/mods/creations - in all states of disrepair and/or completion ...

I am building a 4x5 at the mo' and am starting on the bellows today - although I don’t have an example pic to get the ball rolling yet I would love to see everyone else’s creations no matter how prototype, slash job, 'typical', copied, weird or fantastically crafted they are - I think it would be great to share ideas and skills as we already are but with a few more pics to give those without the crafts vocab (such as myself a few months back) a visual understanding and inspiration also..

I'm into MF and soon LF but anything is good as I'm sure there will be cross-pollination of ideas between the formats...

>> pinhole - panorama - 35mm - MF - LF - ULF - darkroom/contact gear - tripods - accessories/helpers - parts - unique fixes - etc << all good

I *promise* to upload some pics of mine once complete (hopefully soon) - I just don’t have a digital cam on hand...

maybe it could be a drop-folder kind of thing where other threads discussing the aspects of building can link/reference ?


cheers!
nick

[nick mulder]

ah yes - of course! - a pic taken with the home-built cam would be a great addition also

excellent

[Paul Sorensen]

Originally Posted by noseoil

Both cameras were made out of Mesquite hardwood. It is native to the american southwest (prosopis glandulosa, I think) as well as south america. Beautiful stuff to work with. Ages to a dark, rich brown with black, small pores. tim

First someone has a BBQ'd lens, now you have a mesquite wood camera. Sounds like they belong together! Mmmmmm, barbecue!

[argus]

There's no use in tripple posting: pics of the camera are here.
I must say that it is already modified: I made a new rail for it and now I'm awaiting a rack & pinion set for fine focussing.

This is the very first picture I made with it.

And here is are some other results.

[Calamity Jane]

I've built two 4x5s. The first one, a Cherry wood monorail is here:
http://www.geocities.com/diannebest/camera/camera1.html

I wasn't happy with the lack of rigidity in the first camera so I built a Maple camera, a flatbed with the movements of a monorail. I really like this one - it's my first choice anytime I take a camera somewhere:
http://www.geocities.com/diannebest/...ra2.index.html

I also do my own bellows.

[FirePhoto]

WOW! Amazing how you made a camera that looks just like a Softail!

[Dan Fromm]

Originally Posted by Calamity Jane

I've built two 4x5s. The first one, a Cherry wood monorail is here:
http://www.geocities.com/diannebest/camera/camera1.html

I wasn't happy with the lack of rigidity in the first camera so I built a Maple camera, a flatbed with the movements of a monorail. I really like this one - it's my first choice anytime I take a camera somewhere:
http://www.geocities.com/diannebest/...ra2.index.html

I also do my own bellows.

Did you invent the form, if that's the right word, of the tripod legs yourself or did you copy the idea, not the exact shape, from Berlebach? I ask because I got a Berlebach not too long ago and was impressed by how much more stable it was than my first wood tripod, a much larger and heavier K&E surveyor's tripod. The mating surfaces on the K&E's legs are flat.

Cheers,

Dan

[Dan Fromm]

Nick, I've already posted the news here once, so here's the link: http://www.apug.org/forums/forum147/17595-two-short-cameras-one-long-camera.html

The point of this silliness is to shoot 2x3 with longer lenses than either of my 2x3 cameras can focus.

[nick mulder]

Originally Posted by Dan Fromm

Nick, I've already posted the news here once, so here's the link: http://www.apug.org/forums/showthread.php?t=17595

reposts/links are good - I thought it would be nice to have them all in one place as we cant refine searches here to look for posts with attachments - so unless your here everyday there is a heap to go through to find them all...

I was thinking that it would also be good to try and keep discussions themselves in the other threads so that these pages stick to just one thing... the images themselves - hmmm that sounds a bit heavy handed maybe ? - what I mean to say is that it would good for the thread to stay on topic and be image first and foremost and discussion second - rather than end up being just a discussion re. design of a particular posted cam.

up to any suggestions tho (;

thanks for the post Dan, that cam is exactly the kinda thing I was hoping to see here

*grin*
nick

[esanford]

My kit built builder Bender camera is in the Technical Gallery... Why don't we "all have access" to that gallery??? Seems redundant to do it here...