This camera is a poor man's large format camera. It is made with a simple shoebox acting as a dark room.
The lens is a simple glass meniscus (convergent lens) that I found in an old focal doubler. The lens has a focal length of 120mm and thus a large image circle. These simple lens gives large aberrations so once need to place a small aperture in front to minimize distortions of the image.
Then I use some black cardboard paper and punch it with a biopsie tool (http://punch-kai.com/). The hole is 1.5mm in diameter that gives an aperture of f:90. It is something between a pinhole (f:150) and a camera with a real lens (f:64)
The lens is attached in front of the punched hole with some patafix
The camera is a simple box, I build in order to have a distance of about 120mm between the lens and the back. The 10x15cm photo paper is attached in the back with patafix. It is loaded in red light. Photo paper has a sensitivity of about 6 ASA, so with the small aperture f:90, exposure time is quite long, about 30s for EV 11. The shutter is made with a simple piece of paper sliding in front of the hole.
The paper that has been pre exposed 2s is developped and then scanned and inversed. The result is quite sharp compared with a standard pinhole.
All rights reserved