I did it! I built a camera. But does it work? And what are the results going to look like?
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Check out:
Forster UK (lens cones): https://forsteruk.com
Stenopeika Cameras (BW paper reversal kit) : https://www.stenopeika.com
Sekonic (light meter): https://sekonic.com
This project has sort of consumed at least part of my life for the past six months. I didn't start the actual build until maybe November last year, but the designing and re-designing went on for months. And during that process, wow did I learn a lot about lenses! I've got formulae scribbled in notebooks and I don't now have any clue what they mean! I was figuring out focal distances and all sorts.
So here's a brief run down of the home built camera - a simple wooden box with a massive lens on the front, projecting an image onto the back wall where I'll put photographic paper and then run the exposed paper through the black and white paper reversal process.
I started designing for 16x12 paper. At some point last year, must have been back in summer '24, that changed to 20x16. I don't recall that decision making process! But hey, if you're going to go big, better to go all the way right?
I needed a lens for this camera. I couldn't be another pinhole camera, because I specifically wanted this for portraits. The amazing Tim and Negative Thinking loaned me a 360mm lens, but when I started doing my sums I realised that on 20x16, 360mm is a super wide angle. I needed longer.
I started watching ebay, seeing what was around. And I found a 20 inch (500mm) f5.6 Air Ministry, WW2 aerial reconnaissance lens. No makers mark, other than the Air Ministry stamp. So I don't know much more about it!
But the important this was that it was going to be long enough to do what I needed it to do. And wide open at f5.6 it was going to give me sensible exposure times, good enough for portraits.
So I designed the camera around that. I didn't want to get bogged down in creating a bellows and a sliding rail. I'm not a carpenter, my skills and equipment are limited! Plus I wanted to keep the cost down. I think this whole project came in at about £300 all in - wood, lens, fittings, paint etc. Not too bad!
Instead of a bellows I went for an interchangeable lens cone concept - multiple removable lens cones with different lengths, offering me options on focal distance. I'll attach these with bolts, making them, hopefully, more interchangeable. That's the idea!
So I built the box, the amazing Simon Forster from Forster UK - https://forsteruk.com - created the 3D printed lens cones to my specifications, with his own additions to them to ensure they had the strength to hold the 4kg lens! I got two cones, one which should allow focusing at 9ft, and a longer cone which should give me a focal distance of 6ft. I started with the 6ft one!
The crazy thing is, as you'll see in the video, that 500mm lens is still pretty wide!! So even focusing at 6ft, we're bigger than head and shoulders, it's a slightly annoying half height frame size. Not a full length, not a head shoulders. So I think I'm going to need Simon to make me another longer cone pretty soon! Although the DOF at that proximity scares me more than a little. It's already paper thin,
Aaaaaaanyway, you can see the rest in the video! Let me know what you think!