It’s another cold, snowy winter at MIT–perfect for spending your days in the warmth of the MIT Hobby Shop.

I’ve been working away at the next camera for the past month, starting with the base and the front standard, then moving to the back standard. In the meantime I’m teaching a medium and large format photography class at the Student Art Association. Teaching is fun, and with the MIT crowd I’m free to be as physics-geeky as I want. Heh.

As far as specifics of the construction, I’m using three different aluminum alloys, aluminum 2024, 6063, and 6061. Aluminum 2024 is the hard stuff, and I’m using it where I need threads. Apparently it’s harder than brass. Of course, the final anodizing process will harden it even more.

Anyway, here are some highlights of the construction thus far:

That’s a lot of clamps for a relatively small base.

(more…)

Yep. I’m building another one.

As soon as the first camera was finished, I immediately thought about countless improvements. The front standard was too shaky. The whole camera was too bulky and heavy. The bellows sagged. The knobs were not finger-friendly.

So I went back to the drawing board, this time with some inspiration from other cameras (especially Lotus and Ebony) I had seen since I built my first camera. My goals: reducing folding depth, reducing weight, stabilizing the front standard, and keeping it simple. I also added things for measuring the position of certain elements (like the the front swing and shift).

I then applied for an MIT Council for the Arts grant and received a generous amount of funding from the council (!!)–which included money for materials, as well as a lens and different types of film to experiment with.

My goal is to finish the camera by the end of May, and so far I’m well on my way.