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DIYing myself a 4x5 camera :)

New York Modern Living Room

Example of a large minimalist formal and open concept porcelain tile living room design with yellow walls, a two-sided fireplace, a stone fireplace and no tv

Revised 3d-printed lens board for my large format lens from 1850. It is a big chonker for a lens that only covers 4x5, but it has been a pleasure working to get it back into image-making after more than a century out of service.

Lots of challenges remain when trying this for image making. This lens pre-dates even waterhouse stops, so has a fixed aperture of about f3.7 (which is enormous and super fast in large format terms), and has no built in shutter.

I still don't have a serviceable shutter for it, so to get into image-making sooner without wasting film, I'm trying out direct cyanotype photography. The image below is my first attempt: a 4.5-hour exposure on paper treated a month or so before the attempt. This image is inverted from the original blue paper negative. This was a poor choice of subject for such a long exposure (there are flowers here, many concealed by the deteriorated chemistry) as they moved in the wind.

I'm working on modifying a 1950's vintage electric Packard-style shutter into something Arduino-controlled so I don't have to have the camera plugged into the wall and rely on super old wiring. When I have a functional shutter, I should be able to find some low-sensitivity film (ISO 10 or less) to take some regular film photos.

Poolhouse Poolhouse Large elegant tile and custom-shaped infinity pool house photo

Cow Skull, 4x5 print, 2021, Jey Schroeder