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Hand Made Superwide Camera

© John H. Siskin

Hand Made Superwide Camera

Uploaded: August 18, 2006

Description

This camera uses a Nikkor 28mm Perspective Contol Lens and shoots onto 120 film. Covers about 110º!

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Comments

M.Christine Duncan May 09, 2008

This may sound like a silly question, but how does a camera like this work? I'm amazed that it can span 110. #918487

John H. Siskin May 09, 2008

Hi Christine,
Cameras are really pretty simple devices. At bottom you can have a pinhole and a piece of tape for a shutter. The sensitive material, film with a pinhole camera can be taped to the inside of a box. If you want to be able to make a high quality image you need a lens, and one with a diaphragm, if possible. Then a shutter to control the amount of time the sensitive material is exposed, and finally you need to hold the sensitive material. Rather simple actually.

In this case the lens is a Nikkor 28mm PC. The PC is the important part. The lens has large coverage because it is designed to shift in front of the film/sensor to help control perspective on an architectural subject. What I decided to do was capture the whole image of the lens, by putting a larger piece of film behind the lens. Because I am using the whole coverage of the lens I get a really large field of view. The box is made of wood and I used black aluminum foil inside to block out light. I used a Packard shutter, which is a simple air driven shutter. It is not as accurate as I might like, but it does the job. Finally I made a back that uses standard Graflock accessories, these were used on a lot of large format cameras. For this camera I have a back that uses 120 film for a 6X6 negative, but I could fit other backs.

You could do a similar thing with a digital sensor, but it wouldn’t make sense unless you could get a large sensor.

These links go to various articles about building cameras:
www.siskinphoto.com/magazine4a.html
www.siskinphoto.com/magazine1a.html
www.siskinphoto.com/camera4a.html
Thanks! John Siskin
#5906521

Steve M. Harrington May 09, 2008

Cool camera, John. I don't know what PC means, but if I understand you correctly, you achieve the wide angle by expanding the distance between the lens and the film. Right?
I would think you can achieve incredible depth of field with this camera. What is the hyperfocal length? #5906622

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