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 4×5″ and 9×12 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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Robot II | Hans Berning
A camera created in 1930, which uses 35mm film, and besides being totally mechanical, has a spring system that allows one to make up to 5 photos per second just by pressing the shutter release button. The film is advanced and the shutter is armed automatically.
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Contax IIIa | Zeiss Ikon
One of the most iconic cameras from Zeiss Ikon, the 35mm Contax offered a system with interchangeable lenses and a multitude of accessories. It was launched with the difficult task of competing with Ernst Leitz’s Leica. Although it has not outgrown its competitor in glamour, technically, It brought important innovations that marked the history of photography.
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The Gum Bichromate Book | David Scopick
A very practical book with good advice on the technique of Gum Bichromate. From paper preparation to archiving. Some more in-depth considerations on sensitometry and trichromia using the process complete a book that can be a guide for the beginner and also a roadmap for anyone who wants to explore the process further.
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Using a Petzval lens for potraits
Using Petzval-type lenses for portraits when the subject’s face is out of the center of the image requires some care. The article discusses and gives an example of how to decentralize the lens to reposition its optical axis over more peripheral areas of the photographic frame.
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Objectif pour portrait Nº5 – Petzval design | Fleury-Hermagis
Lens description with photos, measurements and presence in a manufacturer’s catalog. Photographs of pencil inscriptions on the edge of optical elements and details of the standard carte-album format, popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to which this lens was intended.
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Rapide nº4 – Petzval portrait type | Derogy
A short text, with photos, analyzes a portrait lens constructed by Derogy-France, based on the famous drawing by Josef Petzval of 1840. It briefly discusses, from this manufacturer, how the Industrial Revolution impacted the optical industry in 19th the century.
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Velostigmat Wide Angle Ser. III f9.5 | Wollensak
Brief article discusses the design, characteristics and ancestry of Wollensak’s Wide Angle Velostigmat lens and shows an image made with it on an 18 x 24 cm negative.
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The story of Petzval portrait lens
Article addresses the technical and historical aspects of the first lens actually thought, calculated and developed for photography, in 1840 by Joseph Petzval.
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La Lumière | Bernard Maitte
Excellent book on evolution of concepts about light throughout history. All back and forth movements about its corpuscular or wave nature are approached within the cultural context of each moment and the philosophical theological preferences of each scientist. At the end it shows how much science really can not have as purpose an investigation into…
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Traité d’Optique Photographique | Désiré von Monckhoven
Published in 1866 this treatise is a great introduction to the optics of the first decades of photography. There is a theoretical part about light behavior and the basics about lenses, but there is also a lot of practical information organizing families and progresses made in photographic lenses manufacturing. It can be found online at…
