do it yourself

Find here some projects you can try (at your on risk) in order to build up some accessories for your lab, for your shooting or fixing photographic equipment. All posts report actual experiences that worked fine for me. I hope you find something useful for you too.

Parodinal, homemade developer in mono-doses

This is a developer that you can easily make at home. It is very versatile, has a long shelf life in concentrated form and is easy to use. Its formula uses dilutions of 1:25, 1:50, 1: 100, and up to 1: 200 in water. It is a great option for developing black and white films for those who develop...

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Solar UV Exposure Meter | complete project

Complete tutorial for building a device that allows you to make sun exposures with the same amount of UV radiation even at different times and atmospheric conditions. Useful for cyanotype, gum bichromat, salted paper and other historical photographic printing processes.

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Magnetic Stirrer

Complete and detailed tutorial for you to produce a magnetic stirrer. It is an invaluable aid for preparing solutions in analog photography, such as developers and fixers. Assembly is very simple and uses low cost components.

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Enlarger head using RGB LEDs – complete project

Complete project for the construction of a photographic amplifier head using RGB LEDs. Includes your timer / mixer. It allows the use of multi-contrast papers and can be fixed on a 4x5 camera for use as an amplifier.

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Dry plate and film negative retouching

Full description of the method for retouching black and white photographic negatives. The technique described is the same as that used from the beginning of silver gelatin emulsions. Very effective for smoothing and correcting, especially portraits.

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Respooling 127 film from 120

Complete tutorial about how to cut 120 to 127 film format and spool it into a 127 film reel. Materials, devices, video and measurements, everything you need to know to use again your cute Baby 127 camera.

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Contact printer

Tutorial with video for building up a photography contact printer. That can be used for large format photographs and also for UV alternative/historical processes like Van Dyke Brown, Cyanotype, Gum Dichromate, Salted Paper, Platinum/Palladium among others.

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Build your 4×5″ camera back

Tutorial shows step-by-step and constructive details to make a large format camera back to work with standard film holders, sizes 4x5" and 9x12 cm.

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Bellows project tailor-made for you

Application creates a .pdf for a bellows used on photo cameras of any size. The drawing indicates the cut-and-fold lines in life size. You indicate the measures, pay via Pay Pal and receive the project by email within a few minutes.

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Enlarger head using LEDs

Article presents project to build a black and white photo enlarger head, with timer, using LEDs and Arduino platform. The result is high power and excellent contrast control for black and white work.

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Ground glass loupe, easy and useful

Quite often we want to check focus more carefully in a view camera . To do that, the obvious idea, goes about using something that enlarges the projected image allowing for more precision than with bare eyes to inspect image’s sharpness. Three problems generally arise when using common loupes...

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Measuring lens aperture

Article explains a method for evaluating lens aperture without dismantling the lens. It can be also the basis for calculating diaphragm diameters for Waterhouse stops according to a desired apertures scale.

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