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Discoman
11-Dec-2011, 00:40
Of course, some back story.
I was browsing around looking at field cameras and threads and reviews on them.
To yo cameras get good reviews, but weight complaints.
Wooden cameras generally get stability complaints.

So, I was wondering if a material like carbon composites could be used? They replace metal in a lot of things, being tougher and less bendy then most metals and much lighter. The problem is, they cost more to make and more time to make each part, and they won't bend, but shatter. So they do cost more.

Could this actually be done? If parts like the front and rear standards and glass holder, as well as the base could be made of composites, it should be easily surpassing metal in strength and stability, but with the weight of wood.
Unless it isn't possible, but if it is, it could mean that even a 20x24 camera is weight wise a reasonably portable thing.
Has this been done? Is someone currently doing so? Could I possibly be into something, or just throwing out some crazy idea that will never work?
Thanks in advance.

Jay DeFehr
11-Dec-2011, 01:11
It's definitely doable. A small vacuum bagging unit isn't expensive, and there's not much material, even in a large camera. The advantages of carbon fiber are exploited by Chamonix in some of the parts of their field cameras. The biggest challenge is design, I think.

I'm thinking about designing a printable LF camera, if I can find the time.

el french
11-Dec-2011, 01:14
http://www.lg4mat.net/LFcamera.html

Steve Smith
11-Dec-2011, 02:27
http://www.ipernity.com/blog/edwinlachica/38074

Ole Tjugen
11-Dec-2011, 05:25
Has been done, and failed due to price.

However the Carbon Infinity (http://www.galerie-photo.com/carbon-infinity.html) was not only carbon fiber, but also titanium and aluminium, besides being designed as a field-friendly monorail with unsurpassed specifications. Add a custom-made form-fitted oxhide bag for the whole thing (though not with room for film holders), and it's easy to see why most of the <100 cameras made went straight into collections and have never been used.

I'm happy to say that when Christophe Metairie sold the camera shown in the link, he sold it to me and I have continued using it. :)

Leigh
11-Dec-2011, 08:40
The problem with using any molded part(s) is the cost of the mold(s).

When you talk about making 10,000 units, it's easy to amortize $100,000 in mold cost.

When you make 100 units, the cost becomes prohibitive.

- Leigh

Len Middleton
11-Dec-2011, 09:16
It would be good to get some insight from those who have been down this road in the manufacturing process. Here I am thinking about Lynn on the manufacture of the C1 Green Monster and Black Monster (magnisium and aluminum castings), and Richard Ritter on the Zone VI (wood with metal fittings) and his more recent designs (carbon fibre rails, wood standards, large lightweight metal fittings).

Leigh's comment on the number of units you are designing the camera for is critical. If you are building prototypes or one-offs, or large numbers makes a big difference. Current technologies does make it a little easier (e.g. CNC machining) to prototype, but there is still the issue of development costs versus amortizing those costs over an entire production run. That can make a big difference in materials used. A some individuals have made their own cameras, but the choice of materials is generally wood, as that is doable individually without access to significant manufacturing capabilities.

I would be interested in hearing from those involved in the manufacturing decisions on LF camera and what weere some of the factors that drove the material and process decisions.

Jay DeFehr
11-Dec-2011, 09:26
Leigh,

Molds for a field camera shouldn't be very expensive. The parts could be designed in a good CAD program and printed with a 3D printer, and molds made from the printed parts. It would be very labor intensive, but materials costs should be reasonable. A lot of time/trouble could be spared by using off the shelf components and making the parts to join them.

John Schneider
11-Dec-2011, 09:54
I'm thinking about designing a printable LF camera, if I can find the time.

Either a photolithographic or stereolithographic process might make a very interesting camera.

Jay DeFehr
11-Dec-2011, 11:00
John,

I think there are lots of possibilities, and more every day. It's very exciting. I like the idea of using off the shelf components and printing the parts to join everything into a functioning camera. The design is the crucial element. What's needed is a LF photographer who is also good with Cad, and a good design freely available for download. That could spell trouble for the LF camera manufacturers at the economy end of the spectrum.

mpirie
11-Dec-2011, 11:00
I'm sure Mike Walker's field cameras are made from either composites or polycarbonates.....may be worth a look?

Mike

Len Middleton
11-Dec-2011, 12:15
I think there are lots of possibilities, and more every day. It's very exciting. I like the idea of using off the shelf components and printing the parts to join everything into a functioning camera. The design is the crucial element. What's needed is a LF photographer who is also good with Cad, and a good design freely available for download. That could spell trouble for the LF camera manufacturers at the economy end of the spectrum.

Jay,

From my experience in the technical area, all designs are compromises. Compromise may be economics, functionality (short rail for wide angle, or long rail for long lenses), appearance, volume (maybe less so now given the tools available), and materials.

There maybe few low cost cameras, as new cameras would need to compete with good quality used equipment.

I would not start to write the obituaries for the limited production LF camera makers yet...

My thoughts,

Len

David Karp
11-Dec-2011, 12:26
My composite and stainless steel Walker Titan SF 4x5 is rigid has hell. You can also take the bellows off and wash it in the sink.

Jay DeFehr
11-Dec-2011, 15:39
Jay,

From my experience in the technical area, all designs are compromises. Compromise may be economics, functionality (short rail for wide angle, or long rail for long lenses), appearance, volume (maybe less so now given the tools available), and materials.

There maybe few low cost cameras, as new cameras would need to compete with good quality used equipment.

I would not start to write the obituaries for the limited production LF camera makers yet...

My thoughts,

Len

All true, Len, but the new camera makers also have to compete with used equipment. An open source camera design that one could print at home or at a bureau would represent another competitor in an already minuscule market, and the playing field is not level. Someone uploading their design to the web for free downloading doesn't care about the competition, and users of the camera could easily implement changes/improvements for future generations of the print. That's a tough business model to compete with.

jb7
11-Dec-2011, 18:15
Jay, you and I have touched on this subject before-

There are many levels your model can operate on. Anyone visiting this site might think that large format photography can only be accomplished by those interested in the 'biggest steal you ever made' or in relation to picking up bargains from the last century, or the last century but one, or failing that, by buying from countries that have no regard for intellectual property rights, or who can be competitive only by having access to skills and labour at rates that are, or might be, exploitative. Or, I suppose (and I fall into this category myself) those with an interest in doing it yourself…

To be able to afford to give away the fruits of your labour, designs for cameras, for nothing, presupposes that you have another source of income, and that you value your intellectual property very highly indeed- it becomes the equivalent of vanity publishing, and the assuagement of the ego makes it all worthwhile. To be able to do this without being independently wealthy, or having an alternative income, would be impossible.

Of course, I suppose it might be possible to produce a design for a camera and give it away- open source, to be modified by anyone who could be bothered, who fancies a tinker, but I don't think the whole camera could be produced like that- not the optics, not the film holders, not the film- not now, at any rate. To be able to produce components to a high standard will require access to expensive 3d printers- not the threaded rod based designs you can buy today on ebay-

The people who make cameras, it has to be admitted, are part of an industrial society in which their labour has to have some value- labour in design, and labour in making. In a previous age, a new design might have been worth patenting. Now, unless you're already an extremely wealthy corporation with the resources to defend your product, or property, you might as well forget about that. Today, Kodak makes more from litigation over a piece of software than it ever can by selling any amount of film.

However, there are many different cameras, and I suppose it might be possible to produce a simple one relatively easily. I suppose it could be seen as a loss leader- to produce a good design- reliable, easily replicable, functional, ergonomic, and if possible, to produce that acme of camera design, an object of fetishistic joy- it might help you to be taken seriously as a designer of cameras, if you aren't already. Also, it might still be possible to produce, to manufacture the camera itself- perhaps a special edition, a signature object, for those who can't be bothered to make it themselves, for those for whom the picture is more important than the camera. Photographers, that is. And there are many of them about, there are countless threads here documenting the unimportance of cameras.

I've been working on designs for cameras, still uncompleted. They're new cameras, not merely copies of systems that have been used for hundreds of years, or copies of more recent models. It's cost me many hundreds of hours so far, and I won't be making the designs open source, I can't afford it. 3d printing is only a small part of the product, it will involve composites, metals, wood, fabrics, adhesives- and a range of skills I could never be compensated for. It could completely fail on one bad review of one small part, perhaps something that I myself consider to be unimportant- but perception is everything, and I have no control over that. Nobody will ever again make their fortune by producing a film camera for sale. Producing anachronistic film cameras might actually prove to be the toughest business model of all, whether or not people are making their printable designs available for nothing.

As you say, design is the most important thing- the crucial element- and that pretty much covers everything to do with the object. However, it doesn't cover marketing and reviews, and a good design has to progress from there, even if you're giving it away. If it becomes a really successful design, it won't cover the reverse engineering, the appropriation of that design, reproduction of that design by others, who can afford to produce it cheaper because they don't have to waste any time on trying, and failing- they only have to reproduce the object they know to work.

I personally don't know why you would welcome the removal of the producers of such an esoteric and niche product- and one that gives pleasure to so many users of that product. Compared to the cost of lenses and film and studio hire, access to models, and travel to location, cameras have never been as cheap as they are right now. True, the world is going through tremendous change- but maybe we don't need to wipe out manufacturing just yet. Maybe we need to have more of it... Maybe it doesn't need to be either/or...

Jay DeFehr
11-Dec-2011, 21:33
Hi Joe,

It's good to see you posting. You touched on several points of great interest to me. Why would anyone go to all the trouble (and you know better than most just how much trouble is involved) to design a camera, or anything else, for that matter, just to give it up to the faceless internet community to have its way with it? I don't think there's a good answer to that question, but there might be many answers. In biology there's a concept known as the Handicap Principle, and you made a good start at describing it above:


"To be able to afford to give away the fruits of your labour, designs for cameras, for nothing, presupposes that you have another source of income,..."

The biologist describing the handicap principle would end that sentence by saying, " and signals excess virility that permits the bearing of the handicap, as in the peacock's excessively ornate tail feathers". Thorstein Veblen called it conspicuous consumption when people do it, and explained the motivation for purchasing costly and useless goods and services in view of one's "competitors". Another possible explanation might be competitive altruism. A person might give his labor up to the group as a gift in return for an enhanced reputation. Or perhaps the reasons are more nakedly selfish, as in wanting one's work to be improved by others, and taking partial credit for any iteration of the work. Or maybe any reasons we think we have are mere confabulations to rationalize evolutionary behavior we don't fully understand.

As for the quality of manufacture available to the hobbyist, it's advancing exponentially, and any advantages remaining for large scale manufacturing are evaporating quickly. I'm not sure why this should be viewed with remorse, or pity. If large scale manufacturing has been selected for extinction, or relegated to a niche, it's because its competitors are more fit. The producers of esoteric and niche products occupy their niche because it was created by a change in selection pressures away from larger scale producers. The elimination of that niche in favor of decentralized manufacturing is the continuation of that trend. I don't shed any tears for Kinkos when I print with my desktop printer, and Kinkos didn't shed any tears for the big offset printing operations it replaced.

If you choose to enter a niche that is collapsing, you must have your reasons for doing so, even if you're not sure what they are, but you can't reasonably expect to thrive there. You might reasonably hope to survive until the niche collapses, but a better strategy might be to adapt to the emerging order.

There is no way for an obsolete model to compete with the one that made it obsolete. As you say, " Nobody will ever again make their fortune by producing a film camera for sale". This would be true even there weren't millions of hobbyist manufacturers forming a social network based on shared, open source designs. That community might never produce a camera designer as talented as you are, but it doesn't have to; it only needs to be as good in aggregate.

As an example, the camera I've been thinking of designing and submitting to the community is a very simple 4x5 portrait camera, with no movements or bellows. It wouldn't be difficult to design, build, use, or improve. The design is the camera's DNA, and if it is able to replicate itself, it will evolve; If not, it won't. I tell myself the experiment is worth the effort, but maybe that's confabulation.

I don't enjoy the thought of you working hard and doing the excellent work I know you do, only to be disappointed by the return on your investment. I wish you all the success you hope for, and more, but I can't help being excited by the flowering of a new, collaborative community of creative people.

georgl
12-Dec-2011, 02:38
What do we expect from an "ideal" camera material? A good ratio between (yield) strength & stiffness vs. weight/density.

Some composite materials like CFRP have interesting properties but it's difficult actually using these properties besides standard geometries (e.g. tubes for tripods). Stiffness of the final design is mostly generated by geometry, not so much by the material used - think of steel sheets shaping a car body. But how do we create complex geometries used in a camera? small-volume industries try to use CFRP for bicycle frames but use simple processes and designs that quite often lead to unreliable designs. A field camera is a complex mechanical design - is it really clever to glue metall hinges, ball-bearing fittings and other components to the CFRP? will it still remain more lightweight and stronger? Another thing is precision, how do you assure that?

I would say the best material/manufacturing technology for >90% of the components of a state-of-the-art field camera is machined metal. High-strength-aluminium/magnesium (there are even composite materials mixed with carbon-nano-tubes) for bigger geometries and stainless-steel for critical mechanical parts.
With modern machining you can create complex geometries (five-axis) quite fast and therefore you can create an integral design (less parts) with high precision (<1/100mm) - that's how many mechanical parts in the aerospace business are made - CFRP is usually suited for coverings/shieldings - something that a field camera design lacks. You will be surprised how lightweight yet rigid a five-axis-machined geometry of steel can be.

Sadly, it would take me years to design such a camera and get the money for a decent machining-center ( 500k$ for a small workshop - outsourcing is also extremely expensive)...

It can also be combined with laser-sintering (3D printing of metal) to create even more lightweight structures but they have to machined for precision and the machines are slow for larger parts.

The question remains: is there are a large enough market for state-of-the-art large format cameras? Well, I think @ 7 billion people there is a niche for everyone...