Petewit
4-May-2008, 09:42
This may interest anyone fool enough to make a 5x4 at home.
As a retiree with too much time on hand I decided I needed a change from blasting away with a digital and hoping to get one good one in a hundred.
This project has slowed me down to a speed more becoming of my age.
Anyone wishing to do the same should start with the bellows. If you can achieve this first time off go on to learn concert violin.
The mistake I made was to use to heavy material which will only compress enough to use a 90mm without movements. Also I didn't know that when a square bellows is folded the openings become rectangular.
Anther mistake was not to have a model to copy. I judged, or rather misjudged everything from a picture of a Shen Hao off the internet. By adding a few millimeters here and there 'to be sure to be sure' the camera has turned out twice the size it should be.
By making the steel adjuster knobs out of some old gates it is twice as heavy as it should be.
By rubbing together two sheets of glass with lapping paste for three weeks I would have a ground glass screen, except I got fed up and had my local glazier give it a quick dash of sandblasting - works fine.
Everthing except lens and a rollfilm holde made from scrap.
The bottom line is that if there is a good lens at one end and a film holder that sits in the same position as the ground glass at the other and the bit in between is lightproof it has to work.
And it does!
Pete
As a retiree with too much time on hand I decided I needed a change from blasting away with a digital and hoping to get one good one in a hundred.
This project has slowed me down to a speed more becoming of my age.
Anyone wishing to do the same should start with the bellows. If you can achieve this first time off go on to learn concert violin.
The mistake I made was to use to heavy material which will only compress enough to use a 90mm without movements. Also I didn't know that when a square bellows is folded the openings become rectangular.
Anther mistake was not to have a model to copy. I judged, or rather misjudged everything from a picture of a Shen Hao off the internet. By adding a few millimeters here and there 'to be sure to be sure' the camera has turned out twice the size it should be.
By making the steel adjuster knobs out of some old gates it is twice as heavy as it should be.
By rubbing together two sheets of glass with lapping paste for three weeks I would have a ground glass screen, except I got fed up and had my local glazier give it a quick dash of sandblasting - works fine.
Everthing except lens and a rollfilm holde made from scrap.
The bottom line is that if there is a good lens at one end and a film holder that sits in the same position as the ground glass at the other and the bit in between is lightproof it has to work.
And it does!
Pete