Here is the newest addition to my small arsenal of home made cameras.  This was just a fun, quick Saturday project.  It was inspired by the paper and cardboard pinhole cameras that you see available from time to time.  For the past few months I considered buying one or two of them, but at about $20 a piece I’ve been hesitant.  I’m all about economy when it comes to photography and I just figured I could make something comparable for a fraction of the cost.  Add to that the fact that I already have half a dozen pinhole cameras I thought it would be interesting to make something like the paper pinholes with a lens.

This is the product of that mentality.  The camera is primarily made of black foam core, glue, and black duct tape to make it light tight.  The lens came from my camera parts box, it was originally on an Olympia type camera, the shutter came from an old Holga 120S that I chopped for parts a few years ago, the spool came from a broken point and shoot and the rewind spool came from a broken slr.  The shutter release button was a problem up until the end of the cameras construction.  I couldn’t figure out what to use, none of the buttons from my junk box would work.  So, I pulled out the screw driver to an eye glasses repair I had.  I cut the metal off with my dremel and filed it down a bit and put it on top of the shutter, perfection.  And it even looks like a shutter release button.  The winding knob is a cabinet knob that I had and the rewind knob is wooden craft part (I can’t imagine what a “normal” crafter would use one of these for).  The cabinet knob is glue to the spool and wooden knob is glue to a dowel rod which in turn is glued to the metal rewind spool.

The back of the camera doesn’t open like most cameras do because I don’t have any hinges laying around.  So, I built the back to operate like a dark slide on medium format and large format cameras.  It slides in and out of place.  It was too loose at first so I had to add a bit of thickness.  I decided to glue the front of a coca-cola box onto the darkslide and cut it down to size.  Perfect fit and it adds a splash of color to an otherwise monochromatic camera.

I’m betting that the f/stop is approximately f/5.6, but only experimentation will tell me for sure.  I shot a roll of sensia 400 through it and I have it spooled in my developing tank, but have not had the time to process it yet.  I’m going to cross precess the roll in D-76.  I’ve never processed color film in black and white developer and thought this would be the perfect opportunity.  An experimental camera with experimental cross processing.

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I am not that satisfied with the images, but now I have good basis to begin taking better pictures with the camera.  I’m only going to show of two because they are the two most succesful images that I got back.  I did not use a light meter when I took these shots, next time I probably will.  The focus is exactly what I expected.  The camera lens was intentionally pushed an extra 5mm from the film plane, which offers a nice soft focus at infinity.

Now that I have a better idea of what to expect as far as image quality goes I will be using the Neretta Snap more often.  From now on though, I’ll probably have to send out the 4×5′s because the lab on campus took almost one month to return eight sheets.  That’s ridiculous and I refuse to allow that to happen again.  So I will have to stockpile the exposed sheets until I have a decent collection going.  Another reason that I will have to send them out is the damaged corners on every single sheet that was returned to me.  They hung the sheets to dry in the drier with steel clips which gouged up some of the corners on my slides.  Damn!

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I love folk music.  A friend of mine (Troy Graham) and I book, promote, and host folk shows here in Marquette.  Our latest show featured Matt Jones of Ypsilanti and Colette Alexander of Brooklyn.  Matt is probably one of the best undiscovered folk musicians in the midwest and he’s also one of the nicest guys, always happy and easy to do business with.  Colette Alexander is one of the world’s greatest cellists, no lie.  The cello is her life and when you hear her play it you know that it’s true.  Also at this show was Mary Mugford (not pictured, sorry Mary), Troy Graham, and the Chanteymen.These pictures were taken with my Cosmic Symbol, a camera made in the Lomo factory from the late seventies through the early nineties.  The Cosmic name was Lomo’s export brand name.  These cameras were primarily shipped to Western Europe, but many made their way to North America, as well.  I used an attached Nishika flash (Thanks Benny) with the preflash covered with duct tape and four layers of plastic bag taped around the top of the unit to diffuse it some.  I shot with Fujifilm’s Sensia 400 and had it cross processed at a local 1-hour photo.

Here are the pictures for your viewing pleasure.  (the slideshow function is currently disabled, as I cannot get it to display properly)

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