Show us your home made camera...

[asmariglia]

hi stone, well for the adjustment bars i used different pieces of aluminium bars 3€ 5$ each that you can find in some hardware store, cut and drilled all with a pillar drill and joined together in dimpled hole with m6 screws and then all was painted in black with an alu spray

[StoneNYC]

hi stone, well for the adjustment bars i used different pieces of aluminium bars 3€ 5$ each that you can find in some hardware store, cut and drilled all with a pillar drill and joined together in dimpled hole with m6 screws and then all was painted in black with an alu spray

Thank you, nice custom job.

[Nimrod]

medium format

[Tin Can]

medium format

WOW! Tell us a story.

Please.

[Nimrod]

randy moe: uff, my english is horrible. well, i made it a 1 1/4 year, wood is jatoba with tung oil + safflower oil, metal is stainless steel (sheet, knobs, focusing shaft, fasteners), titanium (sheet), brass (rack, pinion, tripod socket). weight with wide angle bag is 1338 grams

[Michael Cienfuegos]

Nice…

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[Tin Can]

randy moe: uff, my english is horrible. well, i made it a 1 1/4 year, wood is jatoba with tung oil + safflower oil, metal is stainless steel (sheet, knobs, focusing shaft, fasteners), titanium (sheet), brass (rack, pinion, tripod socket). weight with wide angle bag is 1338 grams

Your english is fine. A very beautiful camera.

Thanks for posting!

[Wolfgang AM]

Great work!!! You must have a good workshop equipment too.
Did you make the bellows also?

[Nimrod]

thanks guys
wolfgang am: nothing special. vice, hand saw, files, "chisels", drill, bench grinder, little lathe and sandpapers ...it's probably all. yes, i made bellows too.
more photos on my flickr

[Fr. Mark]

I decided I had to have a better 8x10 camera. The telescoping box approach leaked light and had no movements.
Design criteria: use up wood already salvaged, use hardware on hand, must have all movements, enough bellows for 1:1 or bigger with an 18" f 3.6 projector lens, square bellows to simplify bellows construction. Ground glass slides out in a frame and film holders go in.

,,,

Yes, the tripod is made from modified crutches found at a thrift store. I am still toying with ways to keep the legs from splaying out other than the rope below, something that'd allow it to be picked up an moved with the legs staying in configuration. Bellows extend 4 feet. Bellows sag is an issue at most extensions. I figure to prop a cardboard box or something under them.

there's a cardboard collar for the front of the lens that allows f8-90 with cardboard waterhouse stops. No shutter.

Camera is not a light weight, it is 30 pounds more/less, but 8 of that is the lens. I've made a front adapter board to take 6" lens boards, and now that I've gotten into the Sinar/Horsman system will probably make another for 5.5" lens boards. and figure out how to add the sinar shutter to this.

The sad thing is, it is so big and heavy it is hard to keep everything lined up, adjusted, and then change things a little w/o everything wanting to change. I made full size plans for parts of it, and it really failed to convey just how enormous this was going to be in 3D.

I have this feeling it may not get a lot of use and that I may someday, if I still feel the call of 8x10, just add parts to the Sinar P kit.

I've spent a lot of time the last year or so mashing together various photo things and done precious little in the way of final prints that make me happy. I'm thinking of using my very limited art time to do more shooting & printing and less building of equipment. And, maybe more painting, too. My wife prefers I spend less time in the basement so it may be that I adopt a more hybrid workflow i.e. film to scan to inkjet print to cyanotype or just to final print on watercolor paper. Someday this camera may spend more of its life in the darkroom as a LF enlarger, but time will tell. Even the Sinar would be better adapted for that...

As for tools: Radial arm saw with carbide tipped multi-purpose blade for construction, and a dado set. Planes, chisels, electric drill/screwdriver, files, hack saw (for shaping aluminum parts), a guillotine cutter for making the bellows ribs, bellows are blackout cloth for backing curtains. Wood: marine grade plywood left over from my son's boat project last summer, maple and walnut, ??Birch?? crutches for tripod. Aluminum channels, epoxy, various hardware store hardware.

If I had to do it again, I'm not sure I would. Definitely, I'd buy more materials to get what I really want for lower weight, easier adjustment, and higher rigidity and less hand fitting. Probably most of it would be aluminum square tubing. I like the look of walnut, but I'm done breathing walnut dust. I prefer to sand maple. I'd not design around a huge projector lens or square bellows that before folding were 54" long. And, I might either have gone directly to 14x17 (Xray comes that big) or 5x7. 5x7 would be a lot easier to store, find lenses for develop, scan, get film for etc. Or, I might've just bought a 100 y.o. limited mvt camera with beautiful joinery and brass work perhaps with scroungy bellows and replaced the bellows and shimmed the ground glass frame to fit modern holders Or some set of holders I had. I don't have a lot of money in this, probably less than $75, but there are a lot of hours for something with a lot of compromises. Well, many times in my past I've noticed that building something from scratch takes a few tries to get it right.