Constructing a 10x8 camera - Stanford style?

Mark Fisher

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Dec 13, 2003
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I made one, but it was intended to use home-built lenses and standard LF lenses. I got the basic idea from the Alan Greene book and modified it so I could use standard 8x10 holders and a ground glass. The trick is to start with holder dimensions and go from there. I made it with thicker (1/2"?) black gator board (like foam core, but with a plasticy outer layer), hot melt and black duct tape. It worked really well. I don't have measurements, but lots of images of the construction details here.
 

NedL

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I recently built a set of simple holders for paper negatives and calotypes, and one that holds a ground glass. These are one-sided single channel holders, so they are not fancy but they work and they were simple to construct out of 1/8" MDF. The holders are designed for either 8x10 or 7x11 paper negatives. They follow the ideas found here:

http://www.f295.org/main/showthread.php?12458-making-film-holder-need-idea

-- unfortunately the photos at that link no longer exist, but if you read the descriptions you can work it out. Like Mark's, mine are for use in a lensed camera. The trick is to make the distance to the GG or the surface of the paper be determined by the thickness of the MDF rather than by something you need to measure or cut, so it is consistent. For pinhole that won't matter though. With mine, the trick Jim mentioned with paper is also needed to remove the paper negatives, but it works like a charm ( thanks to my schoolteacher wife who suggested it to me... they know all the little tricks like that! )

There is a picture of some of the pieces before I glued them together in this post:

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

I used the "soft side" of inexpensive stick-on velcro strip as the light trap and it works just fine.
 
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pdeeh

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Ah Ned that's interesting. You use the same slot for the paper negative and the darkslide, which is a marvellous simplification that hadn't occurred to me.

Constructing "picture frame" shapes to build a holder uses a lot of material - I think I would need 3 sheets of A3 per holder as a minimum (for a double sided holder). If one treats each side of the quadrilaterals as a separate strip, it's much more efficient (one and a bit holders per sheet), but needs more thought and of course is more fiddly and prone to error.

Mark that's a nice looking camera. Thanks for the link. I'd like to have a go at something similar one day. I actually bought the Greene book the other week but then sent it back in a fit of buyer's remorse. I'll keep my eyes open for a second-hand copy I think
 

TheToadMen

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Sep 18, 2012
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