Around the end of my second fall semester, I found myself obsessing over the quality of my negatives. As I started experimenting with the Student Art Association’s Speed Graphic, the addiction to large format quickly set in. However, I was hesitant to purchase a large format camera of my own—the ones I fancied were especially expensive and I was on a student budget.

In November I had the brilliant idea of building my own view camera. I wouldn’t start at 4×5. No, I’d start with an 8×10. And forget a monorail. I wanted a beautifully portable (and complex) field camera.

As soon as the idea set in, it infected my thoughts throughout the semester. I was itching to get started on the design, but I waited—if I started before finals week, I would never get my work done.

At the end finals week, I started creating a theoretical design in SketchUp. I read up on the design in several places: Rayment Kirby, The View Camera Construction FAQ, The View Camera Zone, and a few forums. No one had a design for an 8×10 field camera, although Rayment Kirby offered a great description of a 4×5 camera. I spent the last part of December and the first week of January processing the information and creating a design which looked like it should work, and I probably made it more complex than it needed to be with several movements.

In the meantime, I spent my two weeks at home working on a bellows design. My mom brought me to a fabric store where I bought some blackout cloth, faux leather, and black poplin. I spent a week and a half trying to find the proper angles for the ends of the ribs (made out of file folders), and the end of my stay putting it all together (right down to the hour before my flight back to MIT).

The evidence of my labor:

The bellows for an 8×10 camera are quite large. I didn’t quite realize the scope of the whole project until I laid out the stencils. (I’m ~5′6″)

I turned my room into my main workshop when the garage got a bit too cold. Early on, I thought the floor might be a great place to work, but my cat evidently thought otherwise, so I put a big piece of plywood on top of my desk and dresser.

Once I’d determined that the ribs for my bellows were the right shape, I glued them to a large piece of brown “kraft” paper to test the design.

Happy with the design so far, I started tracing the stencils on to the blackout cloth then glued the ribs on.

After several hours (spaced out over three days), I finally finished the blackout cloth. The next problem: I needed more glue…now.

Once I had the glue (thanks mom) I started gluing on the poplin and faux leather to the blackout cloth.

I made sure to avoid any stray cat and dog hair…

It’s now 12pm and the day of my flight back to MIT.

With little time left, I hastily folded the bellows into shape with the help of my mom.

The result was a nice, neat-cornered, but a little lopsided, set of 8×10 bellows.

Tags: building

Posted under Camera Construction.
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