how is that project coming along? any new photos of your progress. seems to me that you would not need the focus track to be geared the entire length of the camera. you can just move the standards by hand until they get close to where you need to be and then use a much shorter focus track to get the standard in focus. would require a bit more engineering, but might save a lot of headache.Originally Posted by thorley
Re: Show us your home made camera...
Another Take On the Polaroid Pathfinder. Minimalist, using only the simplest parts of the camera. Lens plane, bellows, folding struts, focus knob and rails. CUT AWAY all the rest, and throw it away.
Simple ground glass viewing. Idea's envisioned, 150mm lens on the front... Geronar or such. design a detachable back with simple graflock or DDS capability. NO rangefinder, No attempt at hand holding.
(Film prices begin to implicate hand holding as the ultimate Waste of film these days in my personal opinion) What makes sense to me is a tripod and ground glass. Cut costs to the bone without calibrating and monkeying around with the rangefinder. Get out and Shoot ASAP!
This portion of the camera, disassembly, and two metal band saw cuts. Weighs in at 1 pound 5 ounces as you see it.
Place the film plane at 150mm from the lens (result of back extension used in back assembly, to be made), plus or minus the focus distance allowable on the Polaroid knob/rails capacity. The extension from the regular film plane back gets you the coverage on the full 4X5 inch film frame. Tested angles on this.
Plan to use this, or my Travelwide to expose the 160 envelopes of Quick/Easy loads in the freezer. DDS in a pinch after those are gone. This started out before the Travelwide came to be and took a back seat for a while. However, I would now like to finish this. So many Polaroid Pathfinders seeking a $200 solution.....So little time. This appeals to me as the cheapest and best use of all those polaroid pathfinders, then on to the Automatic Polaroids, as Chamonix did with the Sabre. ???? eh? wot??
Thinking milled hardwood block or a composite CNC plan on the detachable back extension. Now of course... 3D printing perhaps?
Attachment 113410
Second attempt at a pack film folder with real lens instead of the funky plastic lens it came with.
The Ysarex is super sharp and the rangefinder is now spot on (was not so with the ektar 127mm i tried before).
Next step is to the run the cable release through the body and locate it instead of the red button.
In contrast to the nice woodworking on display here, I made a 6x7 field camera made mosty from birch plywood from the hobby store and spraypainted, all made in my apartment with my model airplane tools. It uses a rotating back from an RB67 that I bought on ebay. The moving bits are linear sliders I got as free samples. It has full front movements and rear swing. Uses 90, 127 and 150mm lenses I had anyway, and folds completely with any of them. The bellows was the hard part. The design would accomodate up to 250mm of bellows, if I could find thin fabric. I had to use thick blackout fabric and cut almost 100mm off the bellows, so now it will only focus the 150 down to 20 feet, which is still not too bad. Best of all, it weighs less than a single 90mm lens from my RB67, even with a lens and ground-glass installed.
Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do.
--A=B by Petkovšek et. al.
A few shots from the building process of a sliding box camera based around 8x10" Fidelity holders, Sinar boards, 121/8 Super-Angulon and 150/8 Ultragon/Repromaster. Also have a rare opportunity to borrow a 155/6.8 Grandagon-N, but still looking for a proper extended Sinar board.
I built this recently. I like it. The pictures are good too I think!
The back - at least part of it - installed. GG frame with a fresnel from an overhead projector, lightly sanded on the flat side, is next. I thought about constructing a spring back around this. What type of spring to use? Piano wire? Small tension springs, put on the sides of the camera?
Unidirectional carbon fiber strips?
I want to get into ULF photography, but decided to start small. So over a weekend I built a prototype of my planned 14x11 camera in 5x7.
I didn't have any film holders with dark slides in 5x7, nor will I get any for 14x11 initially. Instead there's a dark compartment inside the camera, and by reaching in through the dark bag attached to the top of the box it is possible to take sheets from the compartment and fasten them to the holder for exposure.
The lens is a simple achromat from SurplusShed stopped down to about f50 so I can time exposures by covering/uncovering it with my hand. The camera body is a wooden crate, the rest is cardboard and tape. Total cost for the parts was less than €25.
The sheets are curved inside the camera to get a curved film plane to approximate that of the achromat. The film plane can in itself be moved between two different positions, one that gives images that are sharp from about 5m and to infinity, and one that gives reasonable sharpness at 2-4 meters for portraiture.
Images are composed by placing the camera in front of the subject and hoping for the best.
I posted some samples on my blog, http://photofying.wordpress.com/2014...format-camera/
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