Filmwasters
Which Board? => Articles => : JoeV December 29, 2014, 05:14:25 AM
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Today I made a video describing four of my pinhole camera designs. Hopefully folks here will find some ideas here worth trying, and improving upon.
~Joe
http://youtu.be/bY5sATO4V1E (http://youtu.be/bY5sATO4V1E)
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Nice. I watched the whole thing. You have some good ideas Joe (and clearly a lot more time than me to tinker).
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Brilliant inspirational stuff. Very good of you to share.
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Some fantastic designs you built there! Very inspirational.
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Simple ingenious designs Joe, great video.
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Really like the mechanism to drop the plates in the falling plate camera, if you were to use say two pins instead of the one, you might find the plates less likely to be dislodged in transit.
The pinhole caps on the last camera are quite ingenious.
Mike
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I must admit that I'm impressed by some of them.
Like Mike says, having two pins would make a double security on the system.
I think I'm going to have to take out some of those lunch bodes I made last year and modify them some more...
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Joe, thanks for sharing the video. Some very creative solutions for multi shot pinhole cameras. I love the simplicity of the dropping plates in the first camera.
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I got thinking about the plate dropping camera and may have found a solution to the plate disloging problem.
If the plates were somehow attached together at the bottom with some sort of axle, it would be easier to keep them from getting bumped out of their track.
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Thank you all for the kind comments. The falling plate camera is the third I've made. The first one is a large wooden box, 8x8 format, that has a dual sliding pin mechanism on both sides rather than the top. I added some curved metal rods at the bottom, that fit into holes punched in the lower corners of the film plates, like a ring binder notebook, that helps to guide the plates as they fall. I think there's room in this camera for such an upgrade.
The other problem, not mentioned in the video, is what happens to the already fallen plates if the camera gets badly jostled. They could (and do) get upset such that they're no longer flat in the bottom of the camera, and can even block the other plates from falling, or interfere with the pinhole's view.
So when transporting the camera, I try to ensure it stays upright. In this camera, the body of the box is very lightweight while the thick plywood base is heavy, giving it a low center of gravity, which helps.
One other thing that I had to edit out of the video (due to the 15 minute YouTube limit) was the hinged wooden base, which gives the camera a variable tilt angle without the need for a tripod, or with use of a homemade tripod that lacks an adjustable head.
~Joe
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To prevent the fallen plates from moving back up, you could always fit a sort of triangular lock inside on both sides that could be either spring loaded with a weak spring or maybe using a magnet or a counterweight... the plate would fall pressing the long levers to reach the bottom and then the levers would auto-reset acting like a barb to prevent the plates from moving too much... or something like that...
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Fascinating stuff! I haven't plunged into the world of DIY pinhole cameras, but if (when?) I do I'd love to try to use some of these ideas!
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Joe: the 2x2 brass camera looks fantastic. I also like the final 9-shot woody. Are you planning to show us some of pictures taken with these, please?
Happy new year
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I was running up onto the 15 minute YouTube time limit, else I would have included example images in the video.
Here's a paper negative image made with the 5x8 falling plate camera, at the Sandstone Overlook in the El Malpais National Monument in western New Mexico. The dark terrain below the foreground cliff are miles of lava fields.
(https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8572/15520570744_e1e4f9ce19_b.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/pDuYXj)58FP_Sandstone_Overlook001a (https://flic.kr/p/pDuYXj) by jvcabacus (https://www.flickr.com/people/31285363@N07/), on Flickr
Next is a curved filmplane image from the carousel camera:
(https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7566/15955461738_cfd67cfe5d_b.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/qiVUTU)45CA_Vase001a (https://flic.kr/p/qiVUTU) by jvcabacus (https://www.flickr.com/people/31285363@N07/), on Flickr
Here's a still-life image, of a pepper mill and newspaper, using APHS ortho lith film in the 2x2 brass plate camera; the film has lots of spots and dirt marks, a fault of my processing:
(https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7496/15520571614_eb5bbc7d52_b.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/pDuZdj)22BR_Pepper_Grinder002a (https://flic.kr/p/pDuZdj) by jvcabacus (https://www.flickr.com/people/31285363@N07/), on Flickr
And here's a grid-cam collage image, taken around the village of Placitas near the Sandia Mountains. The central image is of the Sandias (looking into the sun, hence the haze), while the four corner panoramics are looking in four directions from my location in Los Huertas Canyon. The four small images are details in the canyon:
(https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8683/16142912515_02f900c3a6_b.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/qAuDtR)810GRID_Landscape001a (https://flic.kr/p/qAuDtR) by jvcabacus (https://www.flickr.com/people/31285363@N07/), on Flickr
~Joe
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Wow Joe, I really like the grid cam. What a great idea and a really nice execution with the landscape photo collage. Thanks for sharing your designs and images.
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Hi Joe - thank you for putting these up. The grid cam looks wonderful and could work for so many different subjects.