Box Camera


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This homemade camera started out as a weekend project, originally intended to be a Pinhole camera. Needless to say I got a little carried away and many hours went into the design and build. I would not advise attempting to build one unless you own, and are fairly skilled with, both hand and power tools. Enjoy the photos and feel free to send me an email if you have any questions or want to send feedback.

After some thought about how I might be able to take the pin-hole camera to the next level, such as adding a lens for sharp focus, I took some measurements, did some testing, and made a basic sketch with rough estimates of the dimensions. The first test was to hold the lens an inch or two away from a whiite piece of paper to see if I could get it to focus at various distances, which was very easy to do as it turns out, and I could see right right away that the focal distance (distance from aperture blades to film plane) had to be accurate if the camera was going to be able to use the entire distance range the attached lens is capable of, especially the ability to focus infinity. So I measured this approxiimate distance with my hand held test, and then again on an old, already broken film body, not knowing if the distance is exactly the same for all types (brands) of 35mm cameras and lenses, but the distance in my case was a little over 1 3/4'. More about making this accurate later.

Another test was to see how much I could control light, just general knowledge of photography told me that getting a fast enough shutter speed on a hand made camera would be a problem. I did this test on my DSLR camera. I used aperture priority, ISO 200, and stopped the lens down to the minimum same minimum aperture of one of the lenses I planned to use, then I checked the shutter speed needed to get a shot in various lighting sitations. To my surprise I found that other than out in broad daylight, shutter speeds were pretty slow, often less than a 1/10 of a second. That said, I didn't really know at this point if I could make a shutter design that I could actuate with my hand and reach that speed without creating violent camera shake. More on that later too, I decided to try, the worst thing that could happen is i would have to take most pictures in VERY low light. By the way, you will notice later that I didn't end up using the Vivitar lens pictured in the first two images, I ended up using the old Pentax lens with an M42 thread mount, only becasue I have a better selection of lenses for this mount.

Here you can see the camera body is nearly finished. I plan on adding more images so you can better see the design, construction and how the camera works, but for now I'll describe it. The film enters from one side of the camera and exits on the other. I cut two horizontal grooves in the rear piece of wood, one for the plastic cover that protects the unexposed part of the film that also has the 35mm rectangle hole cut in it, and the second groove is inside the first one and is only deep enough to allow the film to slide behind the plastic cover. Then I cut two vertical slots in the sides for the shutter curtain to slide up and down in. The curtain is directly in front of the rear wall of the camera to help reduce the chance of light leaks, and is a fairly tight fit for the same reason. You can see the curtain sticking out of the top on the left picture, That is the part I hold and use to open and close the shutter. On the lower right you can see that it is partially closed and covering part of the exposed film area. There is a piece of wood glued on the bottom front edge of the curtain that stops the curtain as soon as the exposure area is fully uncovered and also prevents me from pulling the shutter right out of the camera.
As promised, more about that critical shutter spped: Well, at this point I was able to determine how fast i could open and close the curtain by simply operating the shutter in front of my computer while recording the clicking sound the piece of wood makes as it hits the top and bottom of the camera while I open and close the shutter. I used the free awesome audio program Audacity to make this recording and also to zoom in to see where the spike on the wave starts (open click) and where the second spike (close click) ends. The distance on the time line (without trying too hard so as not to shake the camera) was a remarkable, blazing 3/10 of a second. Remarkable and blazing both being sarcasm as this is remarkably slow compared to anything someone might try to use without a tripod, even with steady hand of a young lad or lass you'd want at least 1/60 of a second. In case you really suck at math, that's about 20 times faster than I can open and close my shutter wtih may hand. What does these mean? It means, at best i wlll be right at my worst case scenario I mentioned earlier "I will have to take most pictures in VERY low light." Oh well, we can't stop now, we've gone this far, we have to load it up with film and go do some Lomography (a new fangled term for old school photography, go shoot some film flying entirely by the seat of your pants.)

Here you can see the piece of dense cell foam (soft neoprene) I used as a flexible, but hopefully light-tight seal around the sliding shutter curtain. Black masking tape is used over all the wood joints (seams) to prevent light leaks.
As promised, more about acheiving an accurate distance from the lens to film plane: If you look closely at the base of the lens you can see a shiny ring, that is the lens mount. You can see it even better in the previous picture. I had to use a router to counter sink the mount into the wood a little bit in order to fine tune the distance from the lens to the film plane, one pass (a tiny little shave cut) at a time, and test focus inbetween each pass, until the depth was perfect. In case you're thinking "but you can just turn the focus to adjust for being off slightly." Yes, this is true, if you don't care if you can focus close up or to infinity, because if the lens is too far in or out from the film plane and you loose one or the other, close focusing or distant focusing. What is far more important than either one of those is: If your lens is the proper distance from the film plain, the distance meter on the lens will be accurate, mine is accurate to within an inch at 15 feet, and a half inch at 2 feet. And since I will be shooting at f/16 there will be enough depth of field that I will only have to use a tape measure for close ups, anything more than 10-15 feet away and I can ball park it. You have to remember, there is no view finder! No fancy prisms, and trap door mirrors that can flip out of the way in fractions of a second. No, this is old school, you measure (or guess) the distance to the subject you want in focus and you use the distance meter on the lens to focus. You don't get to see that it is in focus, you just know that it is becasue you can trust the distance meter. Now all I have to worry about is exposure (shutter speed.)

Here you can see how I used an empty film canister from a disposible camera (thank you Costco film lab) as the take up reel. I simply taped the film coming from the new roll of film on the other side to the little tail of film sticking out with clear tape. Then sealed all the way around with black masking tape to prevent light leaks on both sides, film is loaded and I probably waste around 2-3 more frames than you might with a real camera. Hey wait, this is a real camera, I meant a one made over seas. The little spring metal tab you see serves two purposes, it prevents the spool from spinning backwards while you're trying to advance the film for the next shot, and it also allows you to count clicks so you can accurately advance the film far enough to prevent overlap, but not so far as to waste film. I figured out after the first roll, that less clicks are needed as you make your way through a roll of film, I didn't think it would be that significant but it is, in the beginnng it's about 12 clicks and buy the end of the roll it's closer to 9 or 10. It will make the difference of at least two extra shots. The tripod mount is from the broken Vivitar, I couldn't recess it to flush so I use little pads on either side to get a tight fit on the tripod.

Nothing but the finest optics, (Yeah, yeah, made over seas, look, you can always make yourself a pinhole if you're a purest.) lenses by Takumar a.k.a. Pentax. I'll be shooting with a 35mm f/2, a 50mm f/1.4, and a 75-260 f4.5 zoom. I don't think the zoom will be very realistic at much above 70mm due to the lack of a viewfinder, but I might just try it ;)

So, did it work? Did I actually get any shots with it? Yes, it did. I had a few bothched shots, I think I tugged or pushed too hard on the shutter curtain, or did someting that caused it to flex enough to let light in. This is still a guess becasue I can't be sure what happened, but the cool thing is, 14 out 18 shots came out, many of them came out really well too. See some shots from the first roll. You can also see the tutorial I posted on Instructables.com where over 11k people have looked at it.