New Clips, New Features
It has only taken me five months to get around to this, but I finally made a new set of ground glass clips for my 8×10 camera. I followed my own suggestion and did not try to replicate the original clip, but stuck to a very simple design instead. Total cost if you don’t count any tool purchases, about USD$1. The drill press admittedly added about USD$125 to the total outlay, but I think I will use it more than once. Add a dremel tool with cutting disk that I already owned, and voila – a camera I can focus without dropping the ground glass on the floor. No more duct tape. I am already experimenting with adding f-stop plates to my primitive lens set-up as it looks like I have about 2″ of DOF at full aperature. I am sure that racing along as I am I will be able to take some plates as early as 2010.
I have added a new page to the blog as well – Dag Diary. A lot of what I am doing doesn’t seem to merit a full blog entry (another few hours stuffing backer rod into all the cracks and crevices in Castle Daguerre for instance..). But I do want to record the steps along the way for future aspirants. So the Dag Diary will be a simple, no frills list of what I have been doing. Sort of a frozen twitter stream for future viewing.
I hope it proves helpful to others. I have learned a lot from slow motion films myself in other areas of science.
Daguerreotype Process | andy | November 26, 2008
