Kevin Klein has a hobby of miniaturizing Victorian technology, and recently he made the world’s smallest wet plate camera using 1/32-inch plywood and other wood materials. The camera is only a little bigger than a quarter, and shoots miniature 1/2-inch square plate images.
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If you’ve never shot with a large format camera before, you might find this video illuminating. In it, photographer Simon Roberts walks us through the process of making prints using a 4×5 plate camera, from setting the camera up to watching the giant prints roll out of the machine.
Because it’s quite a slow process, you think much more about the composition…you take a lot more care and thought in crafting the image.
(via ISO 1200)
YouTube user destinw — the guy behind the chicken steadicam (and worth subscribing to) — recently met up with photographer Darren Samuelson and his massive homemade large format camera. In this video, we’re given another look into how this one-of-a-kind camera works, as Samuelson photographs the Saturn V rocket at the US Space and Rocket Center. Check out some of his amazing ultra-large format photos here.
Photographer Mitchell Feinberg wanted to continue shooting 8×10 large format once his Polaroid stockpile runs out, so he decided to create his own 8×10 digital back. He spent over a year looking for a manufacturer and designing the back, and shelled out enough money to buy a good-sized house:
The development and production of two backs (I wanted to have a spare) was equal to the cost of a good size house – before the housing crash. I know it sounds insane, but the financials on it are not so bad: I used to shoot on average 7.5 Polaroids per photo, and I shoot between 400 to 500 images a year. That’s at least 3000 Polaroids. At 15 bucks a pop. Or about 50K per year, minimum. Polaroid was at one point my highest single cost.
Now he’s the owner of the world’s largest color capture back (two of them, in fact), which shoots 10MP photos. He uses it to shoot test shots before using film for the final captures.
Mitchell Feinberg’s 8×10 Digital Capture Back [A Photo Editor]
Image credit: Photograph by Mitchell Feinberg and used with permission
This is the large format camera collection of the School of Visual Arts in NYC, one of the leading art schools in the United States. Beautiful.
(via Things Organized Neatly via Laughing Squid)
Photographer Darren Samuelson spent seven months building a massive homemade large-format camera that’s about six-feet-long when fully extended. He shoots with 14×36-inch x-ray film that’s about 1/12th the cost of ordinary photographic film but much harder to develop.
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Photographer Cary Norton built a working 4×5 large format camera using Lego bricks, a 127mm lens he purchased for $40 on eBay, and a film holder and ground glass in the back.
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Ann Arbor-based physician and photography-enthusiast Stephen Rosenblum was visiting the Breckenridge International Snow Sculpture competition when he came across this giant large format camera that some giant snowman must have accidentally dropped earlier. The 12-foot tall camera was even hollowed out to look realistically like the inside of bellows from behind.
You can see the winners of the 2011 competition (and catch a glimpse of this camera) here.
(via The Online Photographer)
Image credit: Photograph by Stephen Rosenblum and used with permission
Solaroids are unique prints created by photographer Jeff Mclane by exposing large format (4×5 in) Fuji instant film to direct UV light for long periods of time.
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This foam core 8×10 camera was created by Daire Quinlan, the same guy that attached a 90 year old lens to his camera with homemade bellows.
The lens is an Industar 37 Russian large format 300mm designed for their FKD cameras. The shutter is a Sinar, takes standard 8×10 film holders.
Quinlan exposes onto photo paper instead of film, and focuses the camera by sliding the rear box forward and backward.
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