So let’s kick this thing off! I asked if anyone was up for doing a DIY large format camera, and a handful of you showed some interest.
In this post, we’re starting Stage 1 with a discussion of the basic parts we’ll need. We also have a bunch of links to existing DIY-LF camera projects at the end. The goal here is to talk about what we need to consider when making a very basic pinhole camera. In subsequent posts, we’ll get into the specifics for each aspect of the camera. And after we do that, we’ll post our own DIY camera building tutorials.
If you’re feeling up to the challenge, do some research on your own and start building a camera right now! If you’re still a bit unsure of how to go about portions of it, just wait for our step-by-step tutorials after we build ours. Just remember, the idea here is to make an extremely simple camera and produce an image with it. We can add bells and whistles in the next steps.
Format
“Large Format” is a term that encompasses many sizes of film, so you’ll need to decide up front which one you want to design for. The two obvious choices are 4×5″ and 8×10″, but there are others. If you plan on using paper negatives, you could do any size you want if you pre-cut the paper.
There are trade-offs between the upper and lower spectrum, so think this one through before you decide. An 8×10″ format will produce nice sized contact prints with a ton of detail, but the cost is higher. You’ll also spend more on lenses and other components as our cameras get more complex. 4×5″ is just the opposite trade-off — lower quality, but lower cost.
I’m planning on doing an 8×10″ for my Stage 1 camera, but I’ll definitely switch to 4×5″ when I build up to film holders and real lenses in Stage 2.
Medium
You’ll need to decide if you want to expose paper negatives, film, or both. Paper negatives work just like film (although less sensitive), but they’re a whole lot cheaper, easier to work with, and easier to develop.
Unless you have experience with large format film (or if you already have the ability to use it), I would suggest going with paper negatives for Stage 1. In the coming weeks, we’ll talk about how to expose the paper with a pinhole camera, how to develop it in the darkroom, and how to create a positive image from it.
I’m going with b/w paper negatives for Stage 1, and I would suggest that others do the same unless you already have the ability and equipment to handle LF film.
Lens
Again, we have two basic choices for Stage 1: pinhole and glass/plastic elements. A pinhole lens can be made from a number of household materials, including trash. All you really need is a thin piece of metal and a very small hole. Aside from the cost, an advantage of the pinhole lens is that it doesn’t require a focusing mechanism — everything is in focus due to the extremely small aperture. A traditional lens will be a bit more complex, so I probably won’t even get into that discussion until Stage 2.
Pinhole design can actually be quite complex, and we’ll have to discuss this another time. We’ll get into designing the pinhole size, material thickness, intended format size, focal length, aperture values, etc.
I’ll be making a pinhole lens for Stage 1, and I would suggest doing the same if you haven’t built a camera before.
Material
We don’t need to get too fancy on the construction materials. Things like foamcore and cardboard would work well at this stage in the project. Foamcore is sturdy and easy to work with, but you’ll need to construct the box yourself. A cardboard box might be a bit less sturdy, but hey, the construction of the box is practically done for you.
We’ll also need some tape to seal up light leaks, maybe some glue to hold stuff together, matte black spray paint if you want to get fancy. Other than that, we don’t need a ton of materials.
I’m still split on this one. I might go cardboard box if I come across one of a good working size. If I don’t, I might just pick up some foamcore and make a box.
So my first camera design for Stage 1 is: [CARDBOARD]+[PINHOLE]+[8x10"]+[PAPER NEGATIVE]
Camera Building Tutorials
Some of these tutorials are a bit more complex than we need for this stage, but they’re fun to check out and pull ideas from.
- 8X10 foldable pinhole camera
- Making Foam Core 4×5 Pinhole Cameras
- Making Oatmeal Box Pinhole Cameras
- How to Build a 4×5″ Pinhole Camera
- Pinhole photography – making a camera
For those who have built LF pinhole cameras, what are the other things to consider when making the most basic camera? And for those who haven’t, what are your biggest questions about building one of these things?
[UPDATE 03-12-2010] Check out Brian’s results for his Stage 1.0 Camera.
[UPDATE 04-09-2010] Also check out our video tutorial for developing paper negatives.
March 5th, 2010 at 2:22 pm
Hmm. I’m thinking foam core as well – or even matt paper (the stuff photos are mounted in). It might be a bit more manageable considering you can make it any size you want.
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March 5th, 2010 at 3:46 pm
I’m thinking cardboard for myself just to get the idea and use it as a test. I think I’m going to do the same as you and start with an 8×10 and use paper and maybe film later. I’m going to get started this weekend for sure.
Does anyone have any idea what kind of paper and other stuff I’ll need to develop it and all that. I’m pretty green in this respect being that I haven’t shot much on film much less tried any kind of developing on my own.
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Brian Auer Reply:
March 5th, 2010 at 5:23 pm
I’m hoping to do a paper developing tutorial next week and I’ll lay out all the equipment and chemicals you’ll need. For the paper, I would suggest grabbing some b/w RC 8×10 paper, with your choice of surface finish. I use the Ilford MGIV paper for personal printing. I don’t think we need FB paper for what we’re doing at the moment, it just costs more.
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RandyB Reply:
March 5th, 2010 at 5:26 pm
Cool. I can’t wait to get started. I already changed my mind and think it would be easier to get the right size with foam core instead of cardboard. This weekend I’ll get the materials and start making it so it will be ready to use after your post next week.
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RandyB Reply:
March 6th, 2010 at 12:32 am
I’ve been pretty obsessed with this project today and went out after work and got all the materials and made my pinhole. I used matte black foam board (2 sheets) and cut them into the sides of the box. Then I taped it together on the outside using black duct tape. I had to do a few layers of tape on the edges where the pieces met because I noticed that a tiny bit of light can pass through a single layer. Then I cut a square from a soda can and sanded it with extra fine paper to cut the gloss a little and poked my pinhole, then sanded again to clean up the rough side of the hole. Then I hit the inner side with black permanent marker to reduce its reflectiveness and taped it over a hole in the front of the box.
You get the paper into the box through a flap I cut in the top just big enough for my hand and the paper. The paper will be held in place by adhesive putty I got at the craft store so its reusable and wont make a mess on the paper.
I’m going to go to freestyle photo in Hollywood tomorrow because a friend told me they have a great selection of film, paper and chemicals. So hopefully they can tell me what I need to get for this project. If I’m able to get decent results with paper I may try out some film as well after I have figured out how to get some consistently good exposures.
Brian Auer Reply:
March 6th, 2010 at 10:16 am
That’s awesome! I found a cardboard box last night that should work out well. It’s 8×10″ and about 9.5″ deep (so ~240mm focal length, or ~35mm full frame equiv)… at least I think that’s how this pinhole thing works.
A quick list of darkroom equipment you’ll need: a safelight, RC paper, 3-4 8×10 trays, tongs (if you don’t want to use your fingers), a small glass thermometer, a timer, small and large plastic measuring cups, a squeegee, developer, stop bath, and fixer. I use the Ilford chemicals because they’re easy to handle and mix in liquid form.
Tomas Webb Reply:
March 6th, 2010 at 1:38 pm
And if you’re really cheap like me, you can use water instead of stop bath
March 5th, 2010 at 10:30 pm
I’ll probably do something like a cardboard pinhole too, just to get some exposed paper to practice on. It’ll probably have to be next weekend, though.
I looked through my store of junk – when you work in labs you tend to amass quite a lot of odd stuff people throw away – and it turns out I have several high quality lens elements, probably from an old laser optical bench, that could be fun to use. My old box camera has just a simple single-element lens and no focusing, after all, and it still manages to take passably good pictures.
Hm, I wonder if you can buy paper by the roll. Could be fun to build an LF roll camera ^_^
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March 6th, 2010 at 10:29 pm
So I went the camera store and got all the goodies and we’ve made 5 exposures. The first I think I had a light leak because it was all gray with some odd shapes not resembling the subject in any way and one side was a black bar. the next was all black with a white spot in the center (the pinhole) so I guess the paper is too far from the hole. The next I put 2x closer and was all black so I guess i need a longer exposure. We’re using positive paper instead of negative by the way. Then I modified the box so I can get the paper closer and we got a weird gray blotchy thing that was mostly black.
So all in all SUCCESS!!! We wanted black and white pictures and we got a few black and some white and one with both in a nice gray mess.
No Idea what I’m doing wrong so I gave up for tonight. Maybe I’ll try again tomorrow in the sun.
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Brian Auer Reply:
March 7th, 2010 at 12:05 am
Strange… check out this page for checking your pinhole size, focal length, and exposure time: http://pinhole.stanford.edu/phcalc3.htm
I’m using a 240mm focal length and I drilled my hole with a #74 to get a diameter of ~.57mm and an f/stop of about f/420. The camera is built, so if it’s sunny out tomorrow I’ll give it a try for 60-70 seconds and see what turns up.
And what’s the positive paper you’re using?
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RandyB Reply:
March 7th, 2010 at 12:26 am
Not sure how big the hole is exactly, I used a small safety pin to drill a soda can then I sanded it with extra fine paper. I think that may be part of the problem though, I’m going to remake it.
The paper is fotokemika efke direct positive B/W paper. Glossy RC. EM:810690
I think maybe the paper is part of the problem too, the guy at the store suggested positive so we could skip the step of making the negative into a positive. Also maybe since I’m inside and not in the sun that could be part of the problem.
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Tomas Webb Reply:
March 7th, 2010 at 12:57 am
I’ve found that with conventional pinhole cameras, exposures inside need to be quite long. The last time I did pinhole inside was with a SLR body cap on 35mm, and the best exposures came from exposure times of about 4 hours or so. Exposures in daylight were substantially less than this! Normally around a few seconds using 100ISO film.
Brian Auer Reply:
March 7th, 2010 at 1:04 am
Plus, photo paper is insensitive to red light (though I’m not sure about the positive paper) and indoor lighting has a lot of red in it. For negative paper, the effective ISO drops from 10 (outdoors) to about 2 (indoors). So not only do you have lower intensity light, but you also have a less sensitive film because of the light spectrum.
I’d say don’t give up on the positive paper… it could be worth using for a camera like this. But yeah, get it outside and try some exposures between 1 and 10 minutes.
March 7th, 2010 at 11:45 am
The kids and I just took our first shots on our cameras… and it looks like the negatives turned out great! They seem to be fairly high contrast though. Not sure if this is a bad thing, but I guess I’ll find out when we do our contact prints. If the contrast is too high to work with, I’ll have to try diluting the developer and time it by eye… might even try developing with a very dilute Rodinal solution (you can do paper in Rodinal, right?).
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March 7th, 2010 at 7:08 pm
Did a few tries this afternoon and got a few pictures!!! The first one was pretty much all dark except for a stop sign that was catching the sun and was quite bright (5 minutes). The next we doubled the time and went for around 11.5 minutes and got this
http://www.flickr.com/photos/45358725@N06/4416004194/in/set-72157623451535697
Pretty cool, I had alot of fun doing this. I’m going to try a couple more this week perhaps.
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Brian Auer Reply:
March 7th, 2010 at 9:29 pm
Definitely keep going with it! These things seem to be finicky about exposure time and developing steps. Here are the first two shots from mine that I took today:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianauer/4416333834/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianauer/4415566129/
The kids also took two shots each with their cameras, but I haven’t had the time to upload them to their Flickr accounts yet. I think theirs turned out better than mine!
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RandyB Reply:
March 7th, 2010 at 9:43 pm
wow!!! Those turned out pretty great. Do you think if I used a better quality paper or just switched from positive paper to negative that I would get results closer to yours? My poor exposure didn’t help matters but maybe the paper and cheapo chems had a hand in it as well.
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Brian Auer Reply:
March 7th, 2010 at 10:31 pm
Not sure about the paper, I’ve never tried the positive b/w stuff before so I don’t know how it exposes and develops. You might try some regular negative paper and just invert it after scanning. I did contact prints after developing the negatives, but I also scanned the negatives and I’m going to try that method to see how it compares. My guess is that I could get better results.
Exposure probably plays a big role in the quality of these pinhole shots. I used that web page I mentioned, I drilled my pinholes with hobby drill bits, and the exposure times the page gave me were pretty much spot on.
Which chemicals are you using? I typically use the Ilford chemicals, but I found that developing the negative with Agfa Rodinal at a low concentration and higher time gave a more usable contrast. I think Freestyle carries Rodinal and I would highly suggest picking up a bottle. The stuff lasts forever and it’s a great developer for a lot of b/w films (you can do some serious push and pull developments).
Janne Reply:
March 7th, 2010 at 11:46 pm
Do you have some other recommendation for paper development? Or is Rodinal useful for printing in general, so it’s worth picking up for that reason? Rodinal isn’t readily available here so buying it costs a fair amount of time and money.
Brian Auer Reply:
March 8th, 2010 at 12:24 am
Rodinal isn’t great for printing generally because it’s a film developer and it produces very low contrast prints at lower mix concentrations (it does the same with film too). But for these paper negatives, it seems to work great because of that feature.
You can develop the paper with any of the paper developers out there, you just might not be able to control the contrast as easily with some of them. My only other experience has been with the Ilford Multigrade developer and that stuff made some very high contrast negatives even at a lower concentration.
Anybody out there have experience with other print developers? Maybe some with options for controlling contrast via dilution and/or time and/or agitation?
Janne Reply:
March 8th, 2010 at 12:49 am
I did a search and it turns out you can use D-76 as a slow developer. I have no idea how many times (if at all) you can reuse the developer, so it can turn out relatively expensive, but it can’t hurt just for playing around. I’ll pick up some paper developer as well along with paper, safe-light and so on this weekend.
Now I just have to figure out how to properly darken our bathroom…
Daire Quinlan Reply:
March 8th, 2010 at 2:05 am
I’ve never heard anything other than troublesome opinions about that positive efke stuff (also sells in europe under a different brand name). Very high contrast apparently. If you do a search on APUG there are a couple of threads detailing peoples experiences with it. There are some good results there by one of the posters, but it took a lot of experimentation with pre-flashing, exposure, and developer to get it right. Plus it’s almost as expensive as 8×10 film which sort of negates the point of shooting it.
I’ve shot almost exclusively under as un-contrasty conditions as I could manage, and I develop in diluted DD-X by inspection, snatching the print before it goes crazy. So far they’ve turned out ok.
Tomas Webb Reply:
March 8th, 2010 at 3:25 am
It does look very contrasty, but earlier today on flickr I found a guy who seems to have it spot on! Granted it’s not pinhole, but it is impressive!
RandyB Reply:
March 8th, 2010 at 2:42 pm
Well then, I guess that paper is a waste of time. I’m sure it will come in handy for something someday. I think I’m going to grab a stack of Ilford negative paper next time I’m at the camera store. This positive stuff is a big pain. Plus I can just do the scan and invert instead of making contact prints.
RandyB Reply:
March 7th, 2010 at 11:22 pm
I’m using Arista Chemicals. I wasn’t really paying attention to brands and stuff at the store, I didn’t do any research so I just asked someone and he pretty much just walked around with me and loaded up a basket with all the stuff. When we get to the more advanced stages I will probably upgrade the chemicals. They were very cheap, like $20 for a little bottle of each developer, stop, fixer and wash.
I’ve never used photo paper or tried to develop anything at home. Up until the last month or so I’ve only really shot digital. I’m thinking of taking a Black and white film class at a local adult school. That way I can get a little more hands on with a real darkroom and all the details of developing so I can have a better handle on this stuff when we get to the more advanced stages of this project.
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RandyB Reply:
March 7th, 2010 at 11:24 pm
also Maybe I need a slightly bigger hole. I don’t have any tools for making a precise size so mine is just a very tiny hole I made with a small pin, didn’t push it all the way through either and when I held it up and looked through it I could barely see anything through it.
March 9th, 2010 at 5:51 am
I’ve been following this post very closely… And the only thing holding me back is the paper development process. So I’am waiting for the tutorial before jumping in.
I have already buid a 35mm pinhole and I’m currently building a second model (anamorphic). I had a lot of problems making a decent pinhole. I did 17 pinholes before having a good one. So I purchase acupuncture needles. They are cheap and the size are very precise (I used .22mm). You can pass all the way through the metal to make a nice round hole. Instead of turning the needle to drill the hole, try turning the sheet under the needle (It’s easier to stay perpendicular that way).
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Brian Auer Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 8:24 am
Cool, I’m working on putting the pieces together for the paper developing article. We’ll start with an equipment list, then we’ll follow it up with a tutorial on the process.
Cool tip for the pinhole fabrication… I hadn’t thought about using acupuncture needles. Great for precision on the smaller format pinholes (since the hobby drills don’t go that small).
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Tomas Webb Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 1:19 pm
Thanks for the needle tip! I just purchased some 0.35mm for my camera.
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