Swap Meet
Hooray for the swap meet! I went to a modest photography swap meet today looking for 8×10 film holders. My big plan was to buy one or two if they were inexpensive, or if too pricey just look them over so that I would have a better idea of how to make one on my own. Well, this particular meet had maybe 40 or so sellers and nobody had any 8×10 film holders available. I heard that there had been one, but it went to an “early bird” who paid an extra $15 to enter the show before regular ticket holders. Phooey.
Oh well, there were lots of 4×5 holders (some with film!) and I figured looking at them was pretty much as good as the real thing as far as design principles go. As I said in another post, I think getting the dimensions exact enough to land the focal plane in the correct place will be a primary challenge. Of course then there is light-tightness, sturdiness, ease of use and a couple of other things to worry about too…
The big excitement was that I bought a lens to use with my 8×10 camera. Oh, there were a number of “real” 8×10 lenses in the $350 and up range. They were mostly pretty slow or very, very expensive. But I had been inspired by Jon – a reader of the blog – who in an email offline had mentioned that he had made a camera out of a cardboard box and a lens he had rescued out of an old copier. I really love that. So – armed with my minuscule knowledge of optics and a lot of my best cynical optimism, I started pawing through the “bargain boxes”. After about an hour I came up with something that reminded me of the look of early daguerreotype lenses and it also looked something like a copier lens. Truthfully I couldn’t even remember the correct range of focal lengths, but I talked the seller down to $20 and figured what the heck.
The seller didn’t know what it was, and the expert he referred to in the next booth thought it might be a telephoto attachment for a movie camera lens maybe circa 1940-1950. It is a Benoist-Berthiot 145 mm f 2.3 with no shutter and no f stop. I have some pictures here. It was a total shot in the dark.
So I brought it home and rigged up a temporary lensboard out of foam core, layered it well with duct tape, and voila! I can actually focus an image on the ground glass. A little bit of calculation and I believe I have what in the 8×10 world is a pretty bright wide angle lens. No doubt it won’t be as sharp as the L lenses for my Canon digital (in fact it may be really terrible), but the price is right and it looks like it will form some kind of a picture, so I am a happy camper for now.
It is probably a reaction to the hopelessness I feel sometimes around keeping up with the “digital” Joneses, but I am really enjoying this foray into weird, hand made and kind of crummy stuff. There is a definite feeling of freedom in it.
Daguerreotype Process | andy | June 7, 2008
8x10, Benoist, Berthiot, camera, camera construction, digital photography, lens, photography
Your lens looks great! Here are some examples that came out of my photo copier lens camera. This image was taken before I got my “ground glass” (wax paper) set at the film plane of my film holder:
http://flickr.com/photos/jonlewisphotography/1605996533/
and this was taken once the “ground glass” was moved:
http://flickr.com/photos/jonlewisphotography/1665899820/
Both of these images were taken on photo paper inside so the exposures were about 3-5 seconds with a lens cap shutter. I’m really looking forward to trying the camera with daguerreotypes.
Once you find an 8×10 film holder you can test the sharpness of your lens using paper. Also you could use a magnifying glass on your ground glass to see what sort of resolution you’re going to get. Though whatever the quality, you’ll get some interesting images.
Hi Jon – I somehow missed this comment. Did you make a contact print using the paper as a negative? I noticed the printing is not reversed.
Right now I am still trying to figure out how to attach the lens I bought to the lensboard I have’t made yet. :)
There is a male threaded fitting at the camera side of the lens, but it is very short and measures 58.8 mm in diameter when measured at the outer part of the threads. I don’t know if I can use a filter ring or something or if that is an “off size”.
Anyway, thanks for including the links to the pictures. Inspiration!