Photography on Strings And Tines

Solarcan

Sat, 14 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Technically I didn’t make this camera, but I like the process of taking the picture. The Solarcan is essentially a pinhole camera that you set up for a long period of time to capture the sun’s path across the sky each day. You basically mount it somewhere and remove the small piece of tape covering the pinhole. This starts the exposure. After the desired length of time, you cover the pinhole and take it down. Then you scan the paper since the exposure will continue to happen as long as light hits the paper. I did tweak the contrast a bit in GIMP to make the dark parts darker.

Kodak Tourist Box Camera

Sun, 22 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

An old Kodak Tourist camera served as the inspiration for this project, its design featuring a direct, unobstructed path from lens to film plane. This inherent characteristic sparked an idea: could it capture images much like a Cardboard Camera?

Instead of crafting another cardboard box, I looked for another container. An old silverware box proved to be the perfect candidate. Its contents removed, I painted the interior black to optimize light conditions. A precisely cut hole allows the camera to peek out of the box maintaining light-tightness as much as possible.

Cardboard Camera

Sun, 31 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This is a modification I made to the Scanner Camera when the scanner and laptop I was using for it died. Not wanting to throw it away, I removed the scanner and added a third box. The side of the box attached to the camera would hold a piece of parchment paper to act as the “film.” Then I just take a picture of the image on the paper with my cellphone. While not pictured here, I also added a lid for the back with a cutout to hold the cellphone. That reduces the amount of ambient light that can get into the box, washing out the image.

Scanner Camera

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

This is the first weird camera I made. I don’t remember where I got the idea for this. Regardless, this is basically two cardboard boxes. One box is inside the other and can slide in and out for focusing. On the front of the box is the “lens”, which is a magnifying glass. The inside of the box is blacked out, and I added black foam core to cover the part of the scanner outside the camera. The whole thing was held together by rubber bands. Professional! Instead of using film, a flatbed scanner is attached to the back of the “camera.” This is basically the precursor to the Time Warp filter on Snapchat, decades before it was released!