Old Timey Camera

I built an old timey camera and took my first picture yesterday.

In a nutshell how it works is that I cut a piece of glass to size (4"x5"), coat it with chemicals, put it in the camera, take off the lens cap to expose it, and then develop the piece of glass. So the picture itself is on a piece of glass. That is called an ambrotype. You can also coat a piece of metal (commonly called a tintype, but depends on the type of metal you're using). This is exactly how they did it in the 1800's (which is why this picture looks like it came from the 1800's).

There are no negatives, and every one is one of a kind. You probably can't tell from the picture of the picture, but it's unbelievably sharp (it intentionally goes out of focus around the edges due to the lens) and really stunning to look at. You'd have to see it first hand to do it justice. The edges of the photo look kind of cool, but it's not really supposed to look like that. The chemical coating started peeling away from the edges, which I'll have to fix on the next one.

The camera is built out of 3/4" plywood and the lens is an old movie projector lens.

Photo was taken during the Broncos game yesterday:
http://s3.postimg.org/6phu4ma1f/20141214_105503.jpg

What was your exposure?


Sent from my iPhone

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Originally Posted by Firehaus

What was your exposure?


Sent from my iPhone

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About 3/4 of a second. Actually looks a little bit under exposed, but I like it.

I think exposing for the highlight detail is good. Nice shot!


Sent from my iPhone

Really quite impressive.

Really cool, off to do a little research.

Any limitations as to the size of box you build for the print? With pin hole cameras the size limitation is only with whatever materials you can scrounge to build your camera and the size of photo paper you can find. How is focusing accomplished do you need to expose and develop a throw away print before your final exposure?

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Originally Posted by USMC88-93

Any limitations as to the size of box you build for the print? With pin hole cameras the size limitation is only with whatever materials you can scrounge to build your camera and the size of photo paper you can find. How is focusing accomplished do you need to expose and develop a throw away print before your final exposure?

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There is no limitation to the size. Theoretically you could build a gigantic camera and take poster sized pictures (and some people do). The downside would be the cost of the chemicals. You have to coat these with a silver nitrate solution, and it's not cheap. And would be really expensive to have enough of it to make a bath to coat a huge plate (thousands of dollars probably). You would get hundreds or thousands of pictures out of it, but just the money up front you would have to spend is prohibitive.

It's kind of difficult to explain the focusing, but you'd understand it immediately if you saw it. I have two little boxes that I put in the back of the camera. The first doesn't have a back and contains a piece of glass sprayed with a frosty spray paint from a craft store. When you have that in the camera, and you have the lens cap off, the light shines back through the camera and onto that piece of glass. And the frosty coating captures the light, allowing you to see the image coming through the lens. The back of the camera moves in and out which allows you to focus.

Once you have focused on that piece of glass (technically called the ground glass), I tell the subject to not move a muscle, remove that box completely and insert the second, light-proof box, which contains the piece of glass coated by the chemicals. I coated the glass back in a dark room and closed the box to keep it light proof, so I can't actually see glass. But both boxes are constructed so that the pieces of glass are in the exact same position and plane. So once the camera is focused on the ground glass in the first box, I know it will be focused on the coated piece of glass that I can't see.

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Originally Posted by generalmeow

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It's kind of difficult to explain the focusing, but you'd understand it immediately if you saw it. I have two little boxes that I put in the back of the camera. The first doesn't have a back and contains a piece of glass sprayed with a frosty spray paint from a craft store. When you have that in the camera, and you have the lens cap off, the light shines back through the camera and onto that piece of glass. And the frosty coating captures the light, allowing you to see the image coming through the lens. The back of the camera moves in and out which allows you to focus.

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Understood completely effectively a removable viewfinder. I miss the days when I had access to an old 8 x 10 negative bellows camera. Crazy sized prints and incredible detail.. Too bad the only print I have left is one of my teen age face pimples freckles bad hair and all (I never show it at home due to the embarrassment of how I looked). What kind of depth of field is possible (Lincoln Gettysburg prints come to mind)

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Originally Posted by USMC88-93

What kind of depth of field is possible (Lincoln Gettysburg prints come to mind)

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This particular lens is a movie projector lens, and I probably will only use it for close up portraits due to the unique look. It will focus to infinity, but it's a petzval design which makes it intentionally swirly/blurry the further you get from the center. I think at infinity it would probably look like a defined ball of focus in the middle and blurry everywhere else.

I have a couple of other lenses that are not petzval design and will be more used for landscapes or more distance shots. I haven't tried them yet.

I actually started this project by buying a 4x5 bellows camera off of ebay, but it was broken (unbeknownst to the seller). So I just examined it and sent it back. Then it was easy to build my own after understanding how it was supposed to work.