Konstructor Camera Shots

Portrait of the artist...

Some time back I made myself a camera. I've just got some of the pictures back and it's worked. Yay!

When I dropped the film off to be processed I said to the girl in Jessops that it was quite possible that the pictures may all be black, or white, or on the same frame. But I took 25 or so pictures and got 22 back, which is great.

We don't have a word that describes that feeling you get when you go to get something from the place where it is usually stored and it isn't there.  If we did have I'd be able to use it now. I thought I'd been clever by having all my photographs transferred onto a CD when I had them processed. But of course when I got home I couldn't find my CD drive. Fortunately I'm an inventive soul and managed to use the PS3 to move the files somewhere I could read them.

Turns out that they have not been scanned to very high resolution and there are some nasty scratchy artefacts, but I'm very pleased with the results. They have a nice "other worldly" feel. I'm definitely going to put a few more rolls of film through the device. 

Made My Camera

Well, the camera I started building on Friday is now complete. The build wasn't that tricky, although I did end up making the lens assembly four times until I got it right. 

The viewfinder is kind of interesting. The view through the lens is projected onto a little screen, just like a "proper" single lens reflex camera. However, unlike a normal SLR, the viewfinder image is not further reflected inside a pentaprism.  What you see on the screen is the right way up, but flipped left to right, which took me a while to figure out. The image is also a bit dim, so you need to assemble a little screen around it to keep the light out. 

But it works. You can see to focus and compose your picture and I've loaded the camera up with film and taken a few shots. Everything is delightfully primitive and I'm looking forward to taking the film in and having the pictures processed.