Ultra Ultra Large Format Camera

[Brian C. Miller]

Darren, your camera is fabulous! I love the way it folds up. Some day I hope to build a gargantuan camera, but I think I'll use aluminum and balsa.

[Jim Fitzgerald]

Darren, I love it!


Jim

[Andrea Gazzoni]

Hello. I have just finished building a field camera that takes 14x36 x-ray film. Very surprised I just came across this forum. You can see my blog here: http://darrensgreatbigcamera.com/. It's very exiting to see that other folks are doing the same thing.

Great project Darren! and great beginning here on LFPF
Would you mind sharing more details on materials, time involved, etc..?

[darrenjs]

Thanks everyone for the warm reception! I haven't organized my blog as well as I need to, so I'll quickly go over the materials I've used, etc. The camera is made from red oak,pine,pvc foam sheet,aluminum, and steel. The film holder was made from acrylic and polyethylene, and bonded with epoxy.I started design and construction in early July 2010. The bellows are made from railroad board, ThorLabs BK5 blackout cloth, contact cement, and some tight-weave black cotton cloth for the inside. I built the camera in my apartment and had to move the couch out of the living room in order to construct the bellows, which were 2 weeks of hell. At the end of the 2 weeks, I tried to fold the bellows, and found(to my horror) that I had made a mis-calculation in the design. 2 weeks later, I had them right. The camera design came in stages. To design the whole thing at once would have overwhelmed me. I modeled the camera(in parts) after my Deardorff, and Shen Hao cameras. To date, I've spent about $2,000, $800 of this for the lens(overpriced, I think). The developing trays were made from 1/8" poplar board and sealed with epoxy inside,varathane outside. Because of scratch-prone x-ray film, I've installed water pumps into the trays to keep those chemicals moving, and will keep the film raised from the tray bottom with cookie-cooling racks. My first shoot will be February 20 at Land's End in San Francisco. I've been shooting for about 6 years and still have much to learn, and would appreciate all questions, criticisms, comments, and advice. Thanks, Darren

[Jim Fitzgerald]

Darren, some advice on developing the x-ray film would be to ditch the cookie cooling racks as they will leave pattern marks on the film. Just make sure the trays have a smooth flat bottom. That is all you need. As one who has built two and now a third under construction in my apartment I'm very impressed. Keep up the good work and good luck on the shoot.

Jim