[pure-silver] Re: Building a Camera
- From: Tim Daneliuk <tundra@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 14 May 2015 11:39:03 -0500
On 05/14/2015 10:19 AM, Sauerwald Mark (Redacted sender
mark_sauerwald@xxxxxxxxx for DMARC) wrote:
I shoot with a Walker Titan 4x5 - which is made from ABS plastic and
stainless steel. It seems to me that someone with some design experience
could design a 4x5 (or larger) camera which could be built in a similar
fashion to the Walker Titan, except rather than using a mould to make the
plastic parts, print them with a 3D printer. I have too many projects to
start another now, but it seems as though a set of plans for a 4x5 that could
be printed out, and then assembled, along with some simply fabricated metal
parts would be quite a valuable package.
Agreed. A view/field camera has only one critical tolerance - film plane
and ground glass must be essentially identical. Other than this, the rest
of it is convenience and cosmetics. Even the famously precise Sinars only
use their micrometer adjustments as a matter of repeatability and convenience
in the studio ... something you basically never need in outdoor photography.
In short, all you need is a lightight box and the ability to move the
various axes of the camera and then lock in that movement.
"Identical" here is a relative term. I do a bit of woodworking and happen
to have a super-duper-nifty router fence system that - once calibrated -
will give me repeatable cuts to 0.001" ... except ... not really. Wood
"moves" under varying humidities and tools shift alignment as they are moved
around. I've seen 0.010-0.015" variability just due to these two factors:
Different temps/humidity and rolling the router table around from storage to
use.
(Notice that in high precision machine shops the tools are bolted
to the floor never to move until they are retired.) If I really do need
super-precision routing/cutting, I therefore calibrate the system (with a
digital calipers) before proceeding with the task at hand.
The point is that - if you use wood for the camera - the film plane/GG
agreement and specs are nominal. That wood is going to move and not
in a way guaranteed to move the film plane congruently with the GG.
But it just doesn't matter much. Apart from very demanding scientific
shooting (where you wouldn't use a wood camera anyway), you shouldn't
notice these very small variations, particularly since you are using
movements and DOF to control the plane of focus.
The one nice thing about an ABS body is that this has no environmental
dimensional change. The bad thing about ABS is that it likes static
electricity and is an attractor for dust. If someone where to create
a 3D printer camera, I'd love to see it implemented in a carbon fiber
composite ... except I already have too many cameras :)
--
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Tim Daneliuk tundra@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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