Well, this is my great achievement. Building up world’s smallest working model film SLR camera. This camera, built with 90% of Copper and has Shutter, Viewfinder, Flip mirror, Film Cartridge, Cartridge carrier; Film advanced liver, focusable lens, with aperture and two extensional lenses for macro and wide angle. Its size width 56mm and height 30mm (Body only).
No machinery equipment used for this project except hand driller. This is a manual camera so it should be fully in mechanical based working and requires to use tiny screw & springs. The whole camera has around 65 handmade parts except screw, gear, spring.
The Shutter mechanism, works with four shutter blades made by floppy shutter metal and a driver copper shutter blade, copper blade drives all other four aluminum blades for opening and closing when shutter release button pressed. It is a process runs with seven 16 components. Shutter speed is fixed approximately to 1/60-1/90. Overall it measured about 3.3(W)x2(H)cms
Lens hood is made by PVC pipes and has one compound lens, with focusing system and two extensional lenses for Macro and wide angle also. Aperture, it consists four blades, 3 f stops, f points are 10, 6, 4 (not accurate), blade made by unexposed x ray Sheet.
It took 2 years for me to complete this work. Its size is 56mm X 32mm(Body only). And named it as Cu327. Cu – copper and 327- Melting point of lead because, I joined all the copper parts using lead and finally gave it a electroplating.
For film Developing, I built a small darkroom at my home and bought accessories for developing and printing of Black & white film.
Obviously I have to crop the film reel as per my small camera film holder’s size. Its height is about 10mm but it is quite difficult even though I kept provision for film cartridge. I had to drop the idea because film strip should be equal in height to move freely from film cartridge to loader and while trimming there are chances of getting scratches . Also I have enough films, so finally gone for strip films, it is easier to trim and no chance of wasting of films, only thing is after each shot I have to go darkroom and need to replace new unexposed one. If I use film real spindled in cartridge I can take about 20-25 snaps.
To get an 10x8 inches print from 11x10mm negetive film, i have to keep the Enlarger 8 feet far from the baseboard, for the first one i exposed with three different times, like 5 Sec, 20 Sec, and 1 Munit (Shown above). And focus was quite difficult to get sharp image, so finally gone for the smaller sizes.
No machinery equipment used for this project except hand driller. This is a manual camera so it should be fully in mechanical based working and requires to use tiny screw & springs. The whole camera has around 65 handmade parts except screw, gear, spring.
The Shutter mechanism, works with four shutter blades made by floppy shutter metal and a driver copper shutter blade, copper blade drives all other four aluminum blades for opening and closing when shutter release button pressed. It is a process runs with seven 16 components. Shutter speed is fixed approximately to 1/60-1/90. Overall it measured about 3.3(W)x2(H)cms
Lens hood is made by PVC pipes and has one compound lens, with focusing system and two extensional lenses for Macro and wide angle also. Aperture, it consists four blades, 3 f stops, f points are 10, 6, 4 (not accurate), blade made by unexposed x ray Sheet.
It took 2 years for me to complete this work. Its size is 56mm X 32mm(Body only). And named it as Cu327. Cu – copper and 327- Melting point of lead because, I joined all the copper parts using lead and finally gave it a electroplating.
For film Developing, I built a small darkroom at my home and bought accessories for developing and printing of Black & white film.
Obviously I have to crop the film reel as per my small camera film holder’s size. Its height is about 10mm but it is quite difficult even though I kept provision for film cartridge. I had to drop the idea because film strip should be equal in height to move freely from film cartridge to loader and while trimming there are chances of getting scratches . Also I have enough films, so finally gone for strip films, it is easier to trim and no chance of wasting of films, only thing is after each shot I have to go darkroom and need to replace new unexposed one. If I use film real spindled in cartridge I can take about 20-25 snaps.
To get an 10x8 inches print from 11x10mm negetive film, i have to keep the Enlarger 8 feet far from the baseboard, for the first one i exposed with three different times, like 5 Sec, 20 Sec, and 1 Munit (Shown above). And focus was quite difficult to get sharp image, so finally gone for the smaller sizes.
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thanks for sharing!
High rez film - a standard 35mm negative shot with a 2.8 lens produced a 9 meter x 15 meter photograph with little noise. Samples of the scan from the 9x15 meter image are online. even with the scan the noise factor is way down. thats pretty incredible - agreed.
Here is the whole image and a detail of the image. Scanned at 4000dpi - notice you can see the spokes clearly.
consider what i mention - the scan is going to add some noise, so imagine what the photograph would be like straight to photo via darkroom.
anyway - consider a high pro film for your mini camera - depending on the lens - you should get a great image using a bettergrade film.
The thing is im living in India, these kind of B&W Films, Chemicals, Papers etc... are not available here, i need to import it from Europe countries, and its quite expensive also. I wont avoid B&W film photography until manufacturer stops its production.
Thanks for your tips, i will try this next time.
and they are not that expensive - only 3 or 4 dollars a roll or 134 to 179 INR per roll.
you can get kits for the whole thing - 3 or 4 rolls plus developing chemicals for aroun $15usd or 673 INR
anyhow - looks like a cool camera
Regards,
-SB
Don't get me wrong, this is a lovely SLR camera, but I'd like to be able to build the things I see on Instructables.
Thank u.....................
Wow, please do!
Sometimes instructables is here to make us go "WOW!" and be inspired to do our own impossible thing.
And after that, why not build and launch a Hubble-sized space telescope, to show that your talents are suitable at any scale!
Congratualations!!
Now, how the hell did you build it??
Thank u..........................
WOW, what an accomplishment! Inspirational.
This is as pure as photography gets. I love this, you've made my day.
Seriously...an awesome build.
@uuglypher
@Hom3rSimpson
This is certainly incomplete as an instructable, but I think it is a worthy submission just because of the accomplishment itself. I suspect that a complete instructable for this camera project would be a very large file. Perhaps we could purchase the DVD.
@chrisrx Thank you! You have provided me with the inspiration to customize a CCD back for one of my old AE-1s, a project I have been postponing for over a year. That does not look like such a big project now!
ya i also planed to digitize my Nikon F75. I like classic photography, means all the camera controls should be in our grip (Hand). suggest me the same kind of DSLR. (Instead of film just CCD that all)
thank you................