dkeating2

True.. someone who does the initial build could use a pinhole while shopping for a lens & shutter. I have both a repurposed Xerox lens and an old 1920's ball bearing shutter for this build currently. The issue with a pinhole is framing the shot. But thats part of experimentation

I made an earlier cigar box camera and sanded a pair of chopsticks to fit in a film holder and glued those to the glass and it struck me to just use a film holder with glass inside. I took the most nasty cracked taped-up holder from a lot and sacrificed it. I'm not surprised that someone else thought of the same thing. I also make a glass for a Fotokor 1930's Russian 9x12cm in a similar manner--dremel tool on the metal holder

Agreed. not only did I use it for the initial tape joints between sections, I used it on the folded ribbings as a cloth covering/reinforcement. The bellows feels VERY sturdy to me and not weak or flimsy/delicate at all

Also, I covered the folded ribbings with the hockey stick tape and it did a really good job of supplying a cloth "skin" that feels pretty durable to me

Thank you Professor and you just reminded me to add to the "check for light leaks" section for using liquid electrical tape etc for the pesky leaks

Thanks Rudiger.. good to see you here. All I'm trying to do is encourage people to shoot film & hopefully have fun in the process without being too spendy.

Thanks, I purposely bought some "for parts/repair" ones that were disclosed to have cracks/splits/missing darkslides just for this reason

cigar boxes are great for pinholes! I took this cigar box and made an inner wooden lip, lined it with black felt and made lashings from some old bicycle inner tubes to hold the film holder in tension. I had some thin copper sheet & punched a hole and taped it in place in a hole in the front and made a little flapper shutter.I have seen some absolutely gorgeous CNC router cameras that are just stellar and yes, nothing wrong with that. But here is some bucks-down kid--maybe an underpaid/underemployed guy in a developing nation that has zero access to any of that stuff. But they have a hacksaw blade, drill, sander, grinder (or can borrow them) and a xerox lens cannibalized from a dead copier and some pallet wood...hmmm.

Thanks Uncle K. I have no real finish carpentry tools or access to slick stuff so I knew it was going to look like pallet wood frankencamera. I figure the poor look may be desirable in a rough downtown environment . Less likely to attract riff-raff.I thought for sure my first run at the bellows was going hit a snag but it all behaved OK with no tearing or tape joint failure. the golden rule there is lining up the scored lines.The cigar boxes were $1 each at a thrift store and a godsend to the build both in budgeting and my time.I've been making my own ground glass for a while--I think I have had to replace the focus glass in every large format camera I have had shipped to me

Here is the camera I made from 2 cigar boxes and your bellows design--it works great

I made per your instructions but used some leftover bookbinding tape that worked well. I'll be assembling an adjustable view camera shortly. I thought for sure I would booger it up in the folding but no issues.

That's great gralan! I get 2 pairs a year on my employer supplied insurance and without it, it would be big bucks to replace a pair. Did it work out for you with negligible loss of quality?

Potassium permanganate is $35 fo 5lbs at Lowes--it's used in swimming pool filters https://www.lowes.com/pd/Summit-5-lbs-Potassium-Permanganate/1003041

If you can get the elements apart another good anti fungal treatment for active fungus is a 50 50 mix of isopropyl alcohol and hydrogen peroxide

Not at all. Its not information widely distributed or what i would consider common knowledge. No snarkiness detected in your queston and none intended in my reply

Film still has FAR greater resolving power over digital. The canon 5Ds top of the line (currently) has 50MP res. The Tasma Mikrat film portrayed in the last step is expired microfilm and has 300 lines of resolution per millimeter or about 375MP. Regular Tmax film is rated at 175MP and if you shoot 4x5 you are looking at 1140MP. Now, we also have to look at the overall "big" picture which falls into the old saying "the right tool for the right job". My main line of work is tech support and I'm often asked to take photos at company functions and the co-ordinator always requests that they be in her DropBox by end of business the next day and she wants color.. I use a digital camera. That being said there seems to be a rush to embrace new technology and people realize th...

Film still has FAR greater resolving power over digital. The canon 5Ds top of the line (currently) has 50MP res. The Tasma Mikrat film portrayed in the last step is expired microfilm and has 300 lines of resolution per millimeter or about 375MP. Regular Tmax film is rated at 175MP and if you shoot 4x5 you are looking at 1140MP. Now, we also have to look at the overall "big" picture which falls into the old saying "the right tool for the right job". My main line of work is tech support and I'm often asked to take photos at company functions and the co-ordinator always requests that they be in her DropBox by end of business the next day and she wants color.. I use a digital camera. That being said there seems to be a rush to embrace new technology and people realize that for some applications older was better. Take vinyl records for example. The audiophiles will tell you that digital CD sound is "clipped"and doesn't have the warmth & tonal range of a vinyl recording. A record used to cost $1 to make--a CD is more like .10 cents. But you can't play a record in your car--again the right tool at the right time. Do I prefer film? yep. Do I own & use digital cameras ? yep. Show me any automobile mechanic who refuses to buy metric tools because they are stuck in the past--they better hope they see a lot of pre-70's cars on the road still

PS to my previous post--good writeup here http://istillshootfilm.org/post/114131916747/the-r...The article calculates a digital camera would have to deliver 156MP to equal 35mm quality. An 8x10 view camera neg is 4640MP

please comment back with your results after you clean your lens

This is what I used https://www.lowes.com/pd/Crown-1-Gallon-Muriatic-A...The specs state it's 31.45%. I did not dilute from this stock bottle

Hi Edward,I get the xray film from ebay or if good deals cannot be found there CSXonline has new stock, Blue or Green sensitive film works http://www.cxsonline.com/text/detailpage.tmpl?comm...$32 for a 100 sheet box of 8x10 --you have a red safelight and do the trimming under that and you can develop it visually under the safelight like you would a print. They also have xray developer for about $20 a gallon--I dilute that 1:40 to get normal contrast--extract out 5ml from the gallon & add to 8oz water. Xray film has emulsion on both sides so it does scratch easily--warning there. 100 8x10 sheets would cut down to 400 4x5 or close to 700 2x3's . That puts your cost at about .04 cents a frame. Here are some samples of Xray film from a 4x5 view camera. One is a scan from a negative an...

Hi Edward,I get the xray film from ebay or if good deals cannot be found there CSXonline has new stock, Blue or Green sensitive film works http://www.cxsonline.com/text/detailpage.tmpl?comm...$32 for a 100 sheet box of 8x10 --you have a red safelight and do the trimming under that and you can develop it visually under the safelight like you would a print. They also have xray developer for about $20 a gallon--I dilute that 1:40 to get normal contrast--extract out 5ml from the gallon & add to 8oz water. Xray film has emulsion on both sides so it does scratch easily--warning there. 100 8x10 sheets would cut down to 400 4x5 or close to 700 2x3's . That puts your cost at about .04 cents a frame. Here are some samples of Xray film from a 4x5 view camera. One is a scan from a negative and the other is a cell phone snap of a contact print made from an xray neg and a pic of an actual neg from a 9x12 russian Photokor camera from the 30's

PS.. as you cut the film put it in a dark bag--keep the exposure to the safelight under 10 minutes or cut as you need & put the rest away. A red safelight is OK for blue or green sensitive xray film . A green safelight is needed for newspaper recording film. For safelights I use a short strand of red LED's a few feet away

If you want to use your grandfathers classic film camera with actual film do what I do--buy surplus/expired Xray film--depending on the type you can work under red or green safelight. Make a cardboard template of 6x9cm (2x3) and cut the xray film to fit under safelight. It's usually 100-200 ISO and develops normal looking negs using standard developers like D76 etc

I plan on testing other developers and adding the findings to the instructable. I have some HC110 ready to go and some lab refernce manuals with all sorts of cool old formulas like DK50 etc

I would imagine that optionally you would not need the instaxx camera. You could probably take the exposed sheets back in the darkroom and use a steel roller or kitchen rolling pin to do the trick of busting the membrane and start development

Oops 18x24cm is 8x10 in. ....13x18 is 5x7 my bad

Its a barrel lens with no focus of it's own on a 18x24cm (roughly 5x7) view camera. I am focusing on a scene about 70ft away. I suppose I could torture test it some more but realistically here we have 2 shots--1 pre repair showing the fault and 1 post repair with the fault dramatically reduced taken of the same scene (apples to apples). Of course the fault will still be there if I was trying to get lens flare--it is in the 2nd shot but with minimized effect.

The lens clarity from the fungus was already destroyed--this process restored the clarity. Only clean the internal surfaces affected by the fungus, coatings on front & rear are not inpacted. I will be testing the lens this weekend to see what I get and it was a $5 lens that was junk otherwise.Looking through it on ground glass it looks great but film will really tell the story. I shoot exclusively B&W through the 18x24cm (roughly 8x10) view camera so color coatings are not a deal breaker for this application, but they remain intact on the front & rear elements

Also, depending on how the lens is coated the acid may/may not remove it. Soft coatings applied by a chemical dip like eyeglass coatings are prone to harsh chemicals. Hard coatings of magnesium flouride from modern lenses must be removed with an abrasive like cerium oxide--you cant remove them with muratic acid

Thanks Eltoaster...if you need links for film and developer formulas msg me

thanks Swansong :)