My new 24x24" camera

[luphot]

Hello,
here's my new lightweight camera
i decided to eliminate the flatbed witch is the heaviest part of a camera, the most difficult to built when you have no craft skill, and useless for such format (you will need two tripods or a large plateform if you want your camera to be stable)
The use of one tripod for each part allows all mouvements only limited by bellows (2meters max extention)
I made a 20x20" insert for wetplate but I can go up to 24x24".
The camera itself is 29x29x2.5" and weight 12.3kg with acrylic ground glass
The plate holder is 6.3kg
more pics here: http://medusaphotographie.blogspot.fr/

[ghostcount]

That is brilliant! Full on movements - I really like this and inspiring.

Perhaps in times when movements are not as critical you can couple the tripods to insure better plane to lens alignment.

[BarryS]

This is great, I love the simplicity. For portraits or still life, this is a practical solution. What material(s) did you use for the bellows?

[C. D. Keth]

What's your method for getting the lens centered to the film and getting the standards parallel? I could see that being a slow process with your design.

[coisasdavida]

One question: is the darkslide made of formica?

[luphot]

Hi,
the bellows is made of 240g cardboard+one layer of BK5 (thorlabs)
The darkslide is made with formica
I planed to use a string outstretched between the middle of each part of the camera.
If the angle between string and camera's frames are 90° so the frames are parallele. II-------II
You can also use a iphone appli called ihandy carpenter to mesure the inclination angle on the front and report it on the rear.
Anyway, collodion is a slow process and you can loose 1 min to set up the camera.

[Michael Cienfuegos]

That is one really cool camera! I checked out your blog. Quite a project making that bellows! It looks good!

[Bush]

One question for the camera. How can you finely focus ?

[pierre506]

Simplicity~

However it seemes that we need an assistant, at least.

[cosmicexplosion]

Brilliant design

I might steal it!

I could imagine butchering a mono rail standard for the rack and pinion might work for fine focus.

Or wheels on tripod.

Any other ideas?