I've been wanting to do this little project for several years, and finally forced myself to sit down and do it. I've been wanting to use my mad CAD skills to whip out a laser cut pinhole camera for 4x5 standard backs. Why? I dunno, I guess I just enjoy the fun part of photography?
So I picked up a laser cut pinhole off the web, .5mm in size which equates to about 155mm focal length for 4x5. That meant I needed to design a box with that approximate focal length, and the aperture would be around f295 or so. (There are tons of pinhole calculators out there to play with online)
The box part was simple, the tough part was the light trap for a standard 4x5 holder:
As this was liteply being cut on a laser cutter, the gotcha is that a laser can only cut in two dimensions. Anything needing three dimensions, like a light trap, requires layering. Luckily the laser cutter is so accurate I could build in retaining/alignment tabs into each layer. This worked like a charm and aligned it perfectly.
The rest of the camera is a simple box, nothing too hard to do in CAD. I designed the tabs such that the boards would only go one way, like a puzzle, so there was no confusion about an inside/outside face to the board.
To be continued.....
So I picked up a laser cut pinhole off the web, .5mm in size which equates to about 155mm focal length for 4x5. That meant I needed to design a box with that approximate focal length, and the aperture would be around f295 or so. (There are tons of pinhole calculators out there to play with online)
The box part was simple, the tough part was the light trap for a standard 4x5 holder:
As this was liteply being cut on a laser cutter, the gotcha is that a laser can only cut in two dimensions. Anything needing three dimensions, like a light trap, requires layering. Luckily the laser cutter is so accurate I could build in retaining/alignment tabs into each layer. This worked like a charm and aligned it perfectly.
The rest of the camera is a simple box, nothing too hard to do in CAD. I designed the tabs such that the boards would only go one way, like a puzzle, so there was no confusion about an inside/outside face to the board.
To be continued.....