Two straight days of prepping plans for laser cutting. Steel plate cutting templates, lens mounts and film holder mounts for the B&J 8×10 and some experimental 35mm plate holders made out of 1/32 ABS. Not quite done, but should be good to go when Pagoda Arts reopens after vacation time. A great leap forward.

Found an unidentified large lens on eBay for about $9 per pound. The glass appears flawless and it seems to have a focal length of around 12″ and an exit diameter of about 3.5″ making it in the neighborhood of f 3.4 crudely calculated. Might work for 8×10 based its apparent coverage circle (once I make a brawny enough camera to carry it – it weighs 7.5 pounds)). That is a far future project however as I am still refining my ability to do 35mm and sixth plate.

No this isn’t a daguerreotype. I wish it was. Really I do. It is however the best of the test photos that I took today. I am happy to report that my bargain basement lens is able to produce an image. Yay! Unfortunately as I suspected,  it is pretty limited when used wide open. This particular image was produced using a hand made f-stop with an opening about the size of a dime. If I am doing the math right that makes for an f-stop of a little over 8. Pretty slow in the world of daguerreotypes. The rest of the pictures I took can be seen here. Wide open is pretty fuzzy. Exposure is all over the map since my shutter is a lens cap. I certainly have forgotten some of the refinements of wet chemistry (as you can see), but it was starting to come back to me after a few tries. I also had the fun of using an 8×10 camera for the first time ever. Hard to keep everything adjusted right and get those film holders to seat in place. More challenges – er opportunities. :)

I also cured the light leak in my fan exhaust. Pictures of that here.

All in all a fruitful day.

A warm and sunny day is a treat in the Bay Area in mid-winter. We are supposed to be unhappy it isn’t raining because we are likely to have drought conditions this summer, but I just couldn’t mope around properly – too many daguerreian projects were beckoning. Read more »

I had a fair amount of time this weekend to work on things daguerreian and I made small progress on a number of fronts. I finally created a lens board for my camera – amazing how quick something can go when you have the right tools. Version 1 was made using a wonky old backsaw and didn’t fit right. V2 was made with my new Ryobi portable table saw and looks to have 1/32″ tolerances. Read more »