4x5 camera/lens build

petejt21 · Mar 5, 2015

I have decided to build my own 4x5 box camera for portraits and an accompanying lens. No shutter, Waterhouse stops, basic Petzval lens with a pvc lens barrel. Think something like 1860 or older. Problems? I can get all the materials, but I can't find any resources on how to build it. Diameter of glass lens elements? Spacing of the elements? How long or wide the lens should be? Where to place the plate and or how far back from the rear element? Dimensions of the camera itself? I plan on a sliding top with the sides over lapping by maybe an inch, to make a primitive baffle. Slide open the top, place plate in notch at bottom to secure, slide top back and done. Remove cap, 1,2,3, replace cap and done. Need be, to keep exposures over two seconds, red filter on the lens. Why two seconds? the tintypes in the kit are apparently rated at iso 20, and, without a shutter, well, I can't move that fast. Budget? buy a cheap camera/lens? My budget is around fifty dollars, US. This does not include the rockland tintype parlor kit. Advice? resources? Any help would be great. Thank you and have a great day.

John Koehrer · Mar 5, 2015

A lot of what you want is interconnected so,
I'd think the first item would be plate size & work from there.
After size, the next step would be lens.

Assuming a 4X5 plate, a ~135-150mm lens is normal, portrait would be ~180-210mm If the plate is different the related focal lengths would change.
So much in the lens would be what you have access to.

Is this going to be a sliding box able to focus or fixed focus? If a box camera the plate could go against the back of the camera.
If you want to focus, the plate would need to be at the same plane(ground glass) you focus on.
When you make it, you can focus the camera and set several distances, Mark the camera for the distance & use a string to set your subject distance.

Material? Wood, Gator board, ABS?

It would be easy to gut a simple box camera and use that with the original lens. Something that used 116 or 122 size roll film.
A pinhole camera would be pretty straightforward and eliminate the need for the lens. That would be the easy way out. Also gives longish exposure times.

winger · Mar 5, 2015

Look for the book, Primitive Photography, by Alan Green. I'm fairly sure you can find it on Amazon. He has loads of info on building lenses and cameras, though he does an 8x10 in the book. I took a lens making class from him at an f295 symposium and it was fantastic.

David A. Goldfarb · Mar 5, 2015

Moved to the "Camera Building" forum.

Nodda Duma · Mar 5, 2015

If you're not dead set on a Petzval, I posted a thread about a cooke triplet lens that you can build yourself from catalog lenses. I give spacings, lens catalog numbers, etc

NedL · Mar 5, 2015

I think the exposures might be infinitely long on tintype with a red filter.... perhaps a neutral density filter would be better. But if you are making portraits and it is not outside in bright sunlight, I suspect you can manage without a filter. FWIW, sometimes I build my camera ideas out of cardboard first, just to see how it will go and how it works... that's before I cut up mat board or foamcore to make the "finished" version

Sounds like fun!

removed account4 · Mar 5, 2015

the emulsion for the rockland kit is rated between 1 and 6 depending on the kind of light ..
ISO 20?! never heard of that, and I have been using rockland colloid's emulsion since November 1986 ..
I've made rockland tintypes and glass positives in a foam core camera and Wollaston meniscus lens ( single plano convex element )

depending on the rockland emulsion you use your red filter might make your images extremely contrasty ( some of their emulsion is VC like paper emulsion ... and a red filter might be like a red enlarging VC filter ) you can asses the ISO of your emulsion by coating paper and doing a test strip in camera covering and eventually uncovering your lens ... different times of day, lighting conditions and weather ( reflective snow sand and water ) give different exposures ...

have fun !
john

petejt21 · Mar 6, 2015

So far thanks very much. Material of camera? pine board, Lens? pvc. As for the lens, I was thinking of fixed focus for simplicity. Iso 20? I just read that somewhere. Being the iso is much lower, like 5ish, the nd filter seems a safer choice. Any formulas related to spacing lens elements? Otherwise I would just test the spacing via some cut down enlarging paper as a plate substitute. Cooke triplet? Ill look into that. The Petzval just has that look to it, but, simplicity is good.

removed account4 · Mar 6, 2015

have you seen the wollaston mensicus lenses that reinhold here on apug makes ?
by all reports they are a thing of beauty .. and come with waterhouse stops so you can
go from extremely soft, to portrait soft to sharp ... and they don't cost much $$.

here's the link: http://re-inventedphotoequip.com/Lenses.html

good luck !
john

bvy · Mar 6, 2015

Most dry plate emulsions are rated 3 to 6, wet plate around 1 to 3. 20 is more characteristic of the slowest film emulsions.

Also, a red filter on your lens seems counterintuitive. Most of these processes are blue or blue-green sensitive. But maybe I'm missing something.

John Koehrer · Mar 6, 2015

petejt21 said:
So far thanks very much. Material of camera? pine board, Lens? pvc. As for the lens, I was thinking of fixed focus for simplicity. Iso 20? I just read that somewhere. Being the iso is much lower, like 5ish, the nd filter seems a safer choice. Any formulas related to spacing lens elements? Otherwise I would just test the spacing via some cut down enlarging paper as a plate substitute. Cooke triplet? Ill look into that. The Petzval just has that look to it, but, simplicity is good.

For material, aircraft plywood from the hobby shop. It's available from 1/32"-1/4" thick. Michaels has it in their crafty supplies and Menard's too.
I'd build a prototype like jnanian suggests. It's a LOT less frustrating to modify foamcore than plywood.

4x5 camera/lens build

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