Home  1: Introduction and research  2: Basic parts and materials 
3: Initial test box  4: Framework mockup  5: Designing lens and aperture mount 
6: Designing camera back and film holder  7: Design tweaks  8: Film holder construction 
9: Camera back construction  10: Camera aperture failure  11: Camera aperture success 
12: Camera back framework  13: Camera shutter  14: Ground glass 
15: Camera front framework  16: Bellow test 


CHAPTER 2: BASIC PARTS AND MATERIALS


The camera will be built out of several materials and components (duh), but the only special parts Iīve ordered this far is a lens element and a ground glass. The lenses can be seen in the image below. I ordered them from a company called Zenit that sells education material for schools. I ordered one 300mm, one 100mm and one 50mm lens, but ended up getting two 300mm and one 100mm lens, which in a way doesnīt really matter because I donīt know if I will be able to build a camera that is compact enough to work with a 50mm lens anyway, and they were really cheap. The lens element is badly glued to a peice of plexi glass that came with a metal rod mounting pin inserted, which I simply removed by unscrewing it. The plexi glass peice is somewhat transparent but Iīll get to light proofing everything later on.

lenses

Single glass lenses.

Below are the ground/focusing glass. Itīs just a peice of glass that have been frosted on one side, and Iīm not sure if i will use this one in the final construcion because the "frosting" is pretty rough which creates a pretty grainy image which can get very hard to focus if the light is not very good. Anyway I have found a tutorial on the internet which describes how to make a ground glass with two sheets of plexi glass and some wax in bewteen them. Or I could probably rough a peice of glass up by myself wich some kind of polish. I havenīt gotten to the details yet on regarding this thing and i will use the current one for now.

ground glass

Ground glass.

Then we have my trusty Lego technic kits that hopefully will provide me with most of the mechanical parts and framework for the camera. I have a quite extensive set of parts and i have also been thinking of making some parts of the camera motorized, but iīll stick to making everything manual to start with.

lego

Lego technic kits.

Below are some of the tools I will use, nothing fancy and most of what I need I already have since Iīm a pretty serious model builder, I guess you have already understood that I like to build things. Apart from the cutting mat which will be put to the test here I have my Dremel tool, various rulers, knifes, pens, circle cutter and hole punch. The orange bottle contains white carpenters glue and Iīll use the small clamps and vices for holding the parts together while drying.

tools

Tools.

Last but not least I will use various kinds of paper, cardboard and maybe some glue for this thing. Where and how I donīt know yet but Iīll get to that in the construction logs. For the bellow I will need to buy some cloth, and then use cardboard as stabilizers, the biggest challenge here I guess will be to get it completely light proof. I have some very good tutorials on how to construct these things as well though. In the end this camerawill probably get pretty fragile and will not stand up to rain and snow and rough handling, but thatīs not the goal anyway, since this is my first attempt to build a camera I want to keep things simple :)

cardboard

1,5mm black cardboard.

Continue to chapter 3: Initial testbox


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