Fixing a leaky camera

The hair is probably one of mine. I need a haircut.

My 3D printed camera leaks light. It works perfectly fine indoors but take it out into the sunlight and things go badly wrong. The pictures have an “other worldly” quality but I’m not always going for that. Number one son suggested that I wait until it gets dark, put a powerful light inside the camera (there’s plenty of room) and then see where the leaks are. The first discovery was that some of my black painted areas were not very black. So yesterday I spent some time painting my hands, trousers, shoes and camera with more black paint. The paint ran out to the point where the spay only worked when held vertically, so I had to hold things in front of the nozzle to paint the bits that needed an extra coat. Hence my attack of “black fingernail”.

Tonight I spent a happy half hour in the dark looking for leaks and applying copious amounts of black tape to leaky joints in the camera. I think it is mostly light tight now.