Rapid Camera Prototyping and Testing

 

One of the objectives in all the camera building lately is to convince myself that an 11-17 year old population can build one of these in two, three-hour sessions and leave enough time to learn how to use it and practice a little. It's important to be able to spend the third session taking pictures so we can develop them, take an 8x10 group portrait on paper while they're drying, and learn how to capture negatives on the fourth day. On the last day: capture, edit, choose, print and maybe display them in the lobby so the other classes can see them when they come and go.

I've already made some accomodations like making the tripod mounts and the winders myself beforehand. There were two other variations to reduce time to completion. 

A piece of card stock slid under the rubber bands would make an adequate counter shutter and take seconds to make. I found it really no trouble to use.

The other simplification was to just draw lines for view finders. It takes a little more concentration than with a 3D object to make sure you're looking straight down the line, but it works. I'm ordering some metallic markers so they're as visible as possible. I swear I hadn't noticed the numbers indicating how many of each candy bar came in these boxes when I chose them for this 6cm camera with 6x6cm image.

Using a pinhole I had already made, the camera was ready and loaded with film in two hours. If the students take twice as long as me, it will be just adequate. After clumsily cutting off one of the stops on the shutter, I decided to redesign the shutter to make it easier to cut out and have a larger glue surface to adhere. The double-weight shutters and the shutter channel would have be made in advance by me. That might also eliminate the need for Xacto knives. I've discovered weeding tweezers are more effective for removing the release layers from the templates and adhesive - and safer.

The day after I made the camera was the only day above freezing we were going to get for a while. I stepped out on the porch to assess the situation and decide where to ride to take pictures. I noticed the sun was shining in my own back yard. It took just under an hour to make these exposures. Times varied from 15 seconds to 3 minutes. By the time an exposure ended, I knew what my next picture was.

I've taken a lot of pictures in the garden and worry a little about being repetitive but as Bill Talbot noted in The Pencil of Nature (I'm paraphrasing): If it's a different angle and the light is different, then it's a different photograph.

The gargoyle with his tilted crown always looks a little rakish but this morning he looked a little jauntier than usual

On the shelf above him the sun shines through a decorative lamp.

Light raking along the side of the stone bird house.

Backlit ivy with a particularly good rendition of the screen.

Some ivy from the other side. In the upper left corner the interference pattern between the screen and its shadow on the birdhouse is really cool.

Elwood looking very metal with a crest on his head, which is a serendipitous merger with the table behind him.

A little left of the arbor. I intended to center it. I was using my new travel tripod. It's portability and flexibility are great but it has four things that have to be tightened to keep it from rotating and I inadvertantly moved it when I opened the shutter. Just having the lines for viewfinders worked well otherwise.

I've been taking a lot of pictures of corners lately.

Garden artifacts in the back corner of the yard.

Fencing which provided a stable base to photograph my new hedge trimmers this summer.

The corner of the lanai.

Since his resurrection this spring, I've had at least five disastrous exposures of Elwood. I finally got a picture of him in The Sculpture Garden post in October. Probably pressing my luck with a second view of him on this roll.

This camera has a .28mm pinhole, approx. f200. Arista.edu 100 semi-stand developed in Rodinal 1:100