Box Camera (Take II)

Luck was with me last weekend! I had run out of wood glue! So I never did start work on that box camera. I say luck was with me, because when I went to the hardware store to pick up some more wood glue, I saw they had a whole stack of finger-jointed wood boxes on a table outside. "Craft project boxes". Ok, making a camera is a craft project. So be it.

I came back the next day with 1:1 drawings and compared sizes. The box is really too big for what I'm after, but only in directions that can handle it. In the direction of focus it's actually a few millimeters short: two. Which is perfect. I can always make spacers to put behind the lens board.

So I now have a neat finger-jointed box, several new strips of 1/2"x1/8" basswood, and the whole bag of wood from my first attempt at a box camera. Tonight I'll measure up the box, throw the thing into CAD, and figure out what I'm going to do with it all. It has a nice close-fitting top I'll probably keep as a cover for the film holder. That should keep stray light off the dark slide slot, and will also double as a back cover when the film holder is removed. (Dust is the enemy of large format cameras!)

I won't have a chance to start building the camera until this coming weekend. Tomorrow is laser safety training on the other side of the island, and the next two days after that should catch me up on machining projects at work. With any luck I can do CAD work in the evenings and get the thing built by next Monday.

Which won't be a moment too soon! I got word back about an archaeology project that's happening out here, and it looks like I'll get to do aerial photography for some of it. I'm excited!
The photographs will be used to make a 3D model of the site, but one of the other people involved said it would be good to take some low-angle art shots as well.

If I can get the 4x5 box camera built and tested in time for this, I'd love to fly it at the site. It has gobs more resolution than my digital P&S (115.2 megapixel equivalent at 2400 DPI), and the large negative can get more detail at higher altitudes than anything else I've got. It would be great to be able to offer it.

Tom