How one photographer 3D printed this beautiful medium format camera

Well, I bet you couldn't do better with plywood and glue.

11 months agopermalink

GrahamHO

Erik Lets see you do it then.

10 months agopermalink

Nathan M

You're a c()nt Erik. How's it feel to just be a vapid c()nt?

Of course looking at your garbage gallery on here, I can see why you'd be envious of his photos. Seriously. Your photos are garbage.

10 months ago*permalink

Morvegil

Why?

11 months agopermalink

Moar

Because creating things is fun. Nothing more to it.

11 months agopermalink

thezapp

Go get a Wild P31 for focus stepping rings and real 4x5 inch glas splates.

11 months agopermalink

Reactive

I bet the folks at Leica are chewing their fists in anguish that they didn't think of this. It's super minimal, has all the useful features stripped off, and even comes in an 'exclusive' color. Just slap on the red dot and it's got to be worth $10,000 of any oligarch's money?

11 months agopermalink

Mammolo02

Looks like a Fotoman to me. Nice project though.

11 months agopermalink

Paul Kohlhaussen

This comments thread cracks me up, thanks for the feature and the feedback.

11 months agopermalink

DonM999

It's got a nice Linhof vibe to it.

11 months agopermalink

WastingTime

Cool stuff. If he could add some sort of focusing bellows it would be great.

11 months agopermalink

George Zip

I think the colour looks rad.

11 months agopermalink

DenWil

Love the color and I admire the work ethic to create s the exact device he wants. Luckily I have my Pentaxes. Not yellow but that's life.

To the people demanding small, lightweight, easy, silent and inexpensive the color must really put them over the edge. All the unobtrusive street work haha.

11 months agopermalink

Roland Karlsson

Looking at his web site you can see that he has to take the camera apart to access the film. I wonder how he keeps the film plane and how he advances the film. The knobs on the camera seems to be dummy only.

he has also taken a sharp portrait with unsharp background. So - some focusing is possible. How? Maybe an extension tube?

11 months agopermalink

Joe Sesto

Drop in film loading is not a new concept...Leica has used it forever with 35mm film stock. It might be a bit more complicated with roll film, but one of those knobs might part of that process. The film advance mechanism creates enough pressure/tension to flatten the film at the focal plane. The $1000 for that used 90 mm 5.6/SA MC lens might be a bigger issue...as is hinted in the article. There used be 6 x 17 roll film cameras...possibly Fuji. Believe Peter Lik used one.

11 months agopermalink

Roland Karlsson

I see no focusing. Is this an infinity only camera?

11 months agopermalink

vadims

It's in the article: "focusing ... possible via fixed spacer brackets".

11 months agopermalink

Roland Karlsson

Thanx.

11 months agopermalink

kpaddler

There are plenty of helical focus mounts for large format lenses from Linhof to chinese made. This type of camera usually don't have focusing bellows...

11 months agopermalink

ogl

where can we see the picture from this camera?

11 months agopermalink

saiko

On his website there are some examples.
Check here: http://paulkohlhaussen.com/3d-printed-camera/

11 months agopermalink

stevo23

Eh - why not.

11 months agopermalink

(unknown member)

Very cool idea that produces really unique results. Must be pretty cool when people ask for the brand and you can say it's your own creation.

11 months agopermalink

Albert Drybrae

Critics, critics, critics. Come on guys, he designed and printed the body of a camera. How many of you can do that? Instead of appreciating the man's creativity and and hard work, you criticize the color he made the camera. We all know he didn't 3D print the lens and processor but please appreciate what he did do.

11 months agopermalink

DPhotoWriter

I thought it's a film camera, no?

11 months agopermalink

Joe Sesto

That Large Format lens has built-in aperture and shutter speed controls, but like all LF cameras it is attached to a bellows for focusing. There is no processor. As this camera has no bellows focus must be determined by spacers placed behind the lens. LF camera images are focused on a ground glass screen located at the film plane. BTW the image is upside down. The only mechanism in this body is for the film advance. The shutter release is in the lens.

11 months agopermalink

Holger Drallmeyer

You are right. He did do a nice job no matter how it was made.

11 months agopermalink

Holger Drallmeyer

Claiming that he 3D printed this camera is like saying "I carved this chair using a wood carving tool only"
3D printing is a tool is a toolbox. No single manufacturing process can do it all. 3D printing is a addition to existing tools. Sometimes it makes sense using additive manufacturing in the process and sometimes it's nonsense.
Clickbaitery.

Nice looking camera though. ;)

11 months ago*permalink

CreeDo

man he had the freedom to make it look just about any way he wanted, and he chose "pixar block of cheese". That color is hurting my soul~

11 months agopermalink

Windeguy

Nice!

11 months agopermalink

Leonp

I get so tired of this "you can 3d-print everything"-BS you hear everywhere. No you can't! This guy did not print a camera, only the body of it.

11 months agopermalink

BlueBomberTurbo

Slap a board over the lens hole, stick a pin through it, and he made the lens, too. :p

11 months ago*permalink

Hasselblad only make camera bodies. Not lenses or sensors. They shouldn't be called a camera company.

11 months agopermalink

AndersSJ

The word camera, comes from the Latin camera (vaulted room), which is a transliteration of the Greek word camara (a vault, arched roof or ceiling, vaulted chamber; room).

Could we move on?

11 months agopermalink

Steboo

@ZeBebito Hasselblad also builds excellent lenses.

11 months agopermalink

No, they don't. The V-series lenses were made by Zeiss and the H-series by Nitto.

11 months agopermalink

Steboo

@zebebito Huh, I guess you're right. Also Fuji, Kodak, Rodenstock & others apparently... http://static.hasselblad.com/2015/02/the_evolution_of_lenses.pdf

10 months agopermalink

obsolescence

I built a handheld wide-angle 4x5" camera out of wood with a Rodenstock 65mm lens, Graphlock back and Calumet viewfinder. Then I gave up film altogether and I'm not looking back.

11 months agopermalink

///M

made the same, same lens, back, with a focusing helicoid

11 months agopermalink

TwoMetreBill

Innovative? No! A bad joke? Yes? I'll sell you my 3.25x4.25 Speed Graphic which is far more capable and usable. It can actually be focused with either the rangefinder or the ground glass. I once built a camera like this out of a 500 sheet paper box and a 6" Goetz Golden Dagor. Kind of fun? Yes! Innovative? No!

11 months agopermalink

Terry Breedlove

Would make a cool 4x5.

11 months agopermalink

SantaFeBill

Kickstarter? Why? You can get any number of excellent medium format film cameras used, many in excellent shape, that have far more capabilities. (See the article here about analog treasures.) So why would anyone pay money for this?

11 months agopermalink

Juck

Yeah,, why innovate anything? Ever? If clowns like you were responsible for innovation,, we'd all still be living in caves and eating dung sandwiches. Keep banging those rocks together.

11 months agopermalink

onlooker

"If clowns like you were responsible for innovation" -- Do you have a stake in it? No? Then why the aggression?

11 months agopermalink

Semper Ardens

@onlooker
Aggression... It's all some people know.

11 months agopermalink

Arastoo Vaziri

'Why the aggression?' Sign of the times. Everybody feels free to insult each other on the internet, under the protection of their anonymity and invisibility. Let's just keep them anonymous and invisible by not feeding them.

11 months agopermalink

apestorm

Its 6 x14 so ones options with medium format panorama cameras is very limited and often over $1k and they are all manual operation like this camera.

11 months agopermalink

(unknown member)

"focusing being possible via fixed spacer brackets." Now that sounds incredibly tedious to work with.

11 months agopermalink

(unknown member)

Word to the wise; you will NOT get that kind of a result from the $500 made-in-China crappy 3D printers floating around Ebay.

11 months agopermalink

You won't get that on any filament based printer. This is manufactured using selective laser sintering printing (zapping powder).

However, some of the $500 "made-in-China crappy 3D printers" are actually pretty good.

11 months ago*permalink

(unknown member)

Their output looks like it has a skin disease compared to a die-cast or machined product.

11 months agopermalink

fuego6

Yeah.. but $500 vs $50000 - its still pretty darn amazing what those cheap chinese 3d printers can put out once you tweak the electronics and tables.

11 months agopermalink

(unknown member)

Lousy surfaces, poor accuracy, very, very expensive plastic material. Apart from the ability to encase voids in material that regular machining can't, they don't offer much superior.

11 months agopermalink

Well duh. It's additive manufacturing. Of course it won't look like die cast or machined products.

11 months agopermalink

What a load of rubbish.

So you're complaining about the "very, very expensive plastic" (which usually ends up coming out at under a dollar a print).

And your solution is regular machining and die-casting....

Have you ever got a machine shop to price up small batches of products? Ever asked a die-cast manufacturer to develop a custom die for your bespoke needs?

I think a smack with the reality stick is needed here.

11 months agopermalink

Juck

Tie the reality stick to a baseball bat and we might have a solution.

11 months agopermalink

(unknown member)

How do you extrapolate a "dollar a print" from the price of the plastic used to mfg. the camera???????

11 months agopermalink

You were complaining about the filament based printers.
Filament costs around $30 a kilo (plus or minus quite a bit). Depending on what you're printing, you usually get over 30 prints from a roll. That's less than a dollar a print.
And, up until recently, our local community fablab, charged $1 per print. They have since gone up in price, but they also have more overhead than just printers and filament.

11 months agopermalink

(unknown member)

There are still a lot of practical problems with making one. What is the interior made of? Film rails, pressure plates, winders, etc., have to be very precise/smooth and can't impart any scratches on the emulsion. We only have the one image of the camera at the moment.

11 months agopermalink

Alex Permit

Big deal. This fellow 3D printed an entire camera, INCLUDING the lens
https://formlabs.com/blog/creating-camera-lenses-with-stereolithography/

11 months agopermalink

mandm

Very good quality with a fine finished surface at $3500.

11 months agopermalink

Kevin Omura

He can probably find lenses on Linhoff Technorama 6x17s though it probably wouldn't be very cost effective....

11 months agopermalink

cdembrey

Look like he copied the Fotoman design http://www.fotoman.cc/showPro.asp?id=33

I'd rather have a Fotoman 8x10 http://www.fotoman.cc/showPro.asp?id=35

11 months agopermalink

(unknown member)

Very vague resemblance. The current Nikon and Canon DSLR's look as much alike. You're going to see commonalities in such basic cameras.

11 months agopermalink

From the looks of it, that lens has a leaf shutter built into it.

Therefore this guy printed a box, which is light sealed when closed, and can hold film and mount a lens/shutter system.

11 months agopermalink

Old Cameras

Exactly. The lens mounts in a 35mm hole and as indicated you have to insert spacers to focus it - hardly convenient. Speaking of focus, you're really just guessing since there's no ground glass - carry a tape measure. The film transport and pressure plate to keep it flat are the interesting parts but you may have to load it in the dark, so 4 frames and then find a dark place to reload. If that's the case you're much better off with a conventional 4x5 and crop it, you'll get at least 12cm width. You'll be scanning it anyway.

11 months agopermalink

It's the bellows and back of my Kodak bellows camera from the 1940s; that's the 3D "printed" part. But my Kodak collapses for transport.

And there are Polaroid bellows cameras from the 1970s that also collapse.

This substitution of "3D printed" for the verb to make is getting tiresome.

There are all sorts of things 3D printing can do that machine tools can't possibly cut--but this kind of thing is a distraction.

11 months agopermalink

Old Cameras

I have nothing against 3D printing but it's the answer to a nonexistent problem. It's a catch phase to imply something innovative and otherwise impossible. It's a standard 4x5 lens, I bought a 90mm f/8 Fujinon a while back for les than $200, the image circle is more than big enough even at infinity. But you can also buy a used Cambo SC for about $200 and focus on the ground glass. Maybe a little less portable but you have to suffer for your hobby. Buy an old Crown Graphic if you need portability, also cheap. Anyway, it's creative but more trouble than it's worth.

11 months agopermalink

I sense a distinct lack of imagination in this thread.

11 months agopermalink

3D printing is great for making a prototype of an item you intend to mold in plastic--like this "camera".

But in reality, of course, if anyone decided to mass produce this body an injection mold would be cut out of aluminum.

Where 3D printing excels is parts with complex internal curved spaces that could never be machined for a mold, or machined directly into the final metal product.

Right, I understand, its a basic lens/shutter that can focus light at the depth of a standard bellows camera.

(Of course the bellows can be replaced by a plastic box, a wooden box, or a metal box--provided these boxes can be sealed so light does not enter, except via the shutter.)

11 months agopermalink

Martin.au:

How so?

11 months agopermalink

Old Cameras

One more: I worked for a company that made, among other things, 3/ph a/c disconnect switches. They prototyped designs for new products with 3D printing directly from cad and that was a revolution. The plastic used was so good they could even do short circuit testing with the prototypes without it melting and burning and blowing up. But yeah, production parts need to be fabricated in a more economical way. Plastic molds for injection molding cost tens of thousands of dollars though so you obviously need some volume.
Kickstarter and injection molding - the scourge of DPR!

11 months agopermalink

Just some of the comments along the lines of:
"I have nothing against 3D printing but it's the answer to a nonexistent problem. It's a catch phase to imply something innovative and otherwise impossible".
"This substitution of "3D printed" for the verb to make is getting tiresome."

Maybe this device isn't interesting enough, or complex enough for your approval, but without 3D printing, it wouldn't exist.
Partly where 3D printing excels is "parts with complex internal curved spaces that could never be machined for a mold, or machined directly into the final metal product."
However, where 3D printing also excels is in making things that are never going to be manufactured because conventional manufacturing techniques require volume to offset cost.

The tone of this thread is bizarre. It would be like me griping that someone's cupboard that they made with their woodworking skills wasn't sufficiently complex, and on top of that, I don't like their chisels.

11 months agopermalink

Martin.au:

Never said "3D printing is an answer to a non-existent problem", that's something you've made up for me.

"but without 3D printing, it wouldn't exist." Why not? Boxes have been built out of plastic for decades--really 2000 years but that's a different story.

"However, where 3D printing also excels is in making things that are never going to be manufactured because conventional manufacturing techniques require volume to offset cost."

3D printing parts, that can be used, and are say watertight, is not as inexpensive as you imply.

"It would be like me griping that someone's cupboard that they made with their woodworking skills wasn't sufficiently complex, and on top of that, I don't like their chisels."

Not at all sure how you got here. But sticking with the cabinet analogy, it's as if someone made a kitchen cabinet with a 3D printer, instead of simply purchasing the wood and joining it.

11 months agopermalink

In this thread. Not you specifically. As I said in my first post.

"Why not? Boxes have been built out of plastic for decades--really 2000 years but that's a different story."
Sure, plastic boxes have been made for years. Now, go and duplicate what is shown above with conventional manufacturing. Let me know the cost when you're done.

"3D printing parts, that can be used, and are say watertight, is not as inexpensive as you imply."
I regularly make 3d printed parts, that are used and watertight. I am fairly certain it's a lot cheaper than getting a custom mould set up for injection moulding. As in orders of magnitude cheaper.

"Not at all sure how you got here. But sticking with the cabinet analogy, it's as if someone made a kitchen cabinet with a 3D printer, instead of simply purchasing the wood and joining it."
Well, let us know when you can recreate the above camera, using conventional manufacturing.

11 months agopermalink

Martin:

First you commented below a comment of mine, in a thread I started.

The obvious inexpensive way to make this as a plastic box, is with straight panels, glue, and gaffers tape, it will work just as well as this device.

"I regularly make 3d printed parts, that are used and watertight. I am fairly certain it's a lot cheaper than getting a custom mould set up for injection moulding. As in orders of magnitude cheaper."

Use varies by application. If your parts are watertight, and inexpensive, they are likely very small.

"Well, let us know when you can recreate the above camera, using conventional manufacturing.".

Again: This isn't a camera, it's a camera body, for holding film. See above about plastic panels, glue and tape for how to make a box very similar to this one inexpensively.

(Yes, if you want the sides to slope, completely unnecessary for the function, you'll have to know how to draft.)

11 months agopermalink

Well, I'll just wait for you to put the equivalent design together with tape, panels, glue and a box.
Here's a few more shots showing what you need to achieve.
http://www.thephoblographer.com/2017/05/26/this-custom-made-3d-printed-camera-shoots-6x14-medium-format-negatives/

Perhaps I'll go and print my own camera while I wait. :D

11 months agopermalink

Martin:

"Well, I'll just wait for you to put the equivalent design together with tape, panels, glue and a box."

You misunderstand, no need of "and a box", the panels are used to form the box, the glue and the tape, hold it (that resulting box) together, the tape can also act as an hinge.

"Perhaps I'll go and print my own camera while I wait. :D"

This line tells me about how well you've understood my point.

And again, the third time now: This guy did NOT print a camera. He printed a box, to which he attached a shutter and a lens.

11 months ago*permalink

Oh. I'm sorry I wasn't precise enough for you.

Well, I'll just wait for you to put the equivalent design together with tape, panels, glue.
Here's a few more shots showing what you need to achieve.
http://www.thephoblographer.com/2017/05/26/this-custom-made-3d-printed-camera-shoots-6x14-medium-format-negatives/

Perhaps I'll go and print my own camera body (box) while I wait. :D

Happy?

11 months agopermalink

Martin:

Just so you're clear, the shape of the body, the bellows replacement, is immaterial. A rectilinear would do.

11 months agopermalink

Sure.

11 months agopermalink

NAwlins Contrarian

re: "The Cycloptic Mustard Monster utilizes 120mm film and produces 6x14 cm negatives."

No, it uses type 120 film, which is about 61mm wide. And although the frames are nominally 6 cm, in reality they are almost always 56 or even 55mm wide, reduced / shadowed by flanges that hold the film flat.

11 months ago*permalink

By your logic the 6x6 format should be called 5.6x5.6?

11 months agopermalink

NAwlins Contrarian

ZeBebito, my main point is that the "120" in 120 film is not a dimension in millimeters, or a dimension at all, and is VERY different from the actual dimensions of both the film itself and the exposed frames that it typically contains. In "6x6", that is a rounded figure; by standard mathematical conventions, 5.6cm may be rounded to 6 cm. On that basis I don't object to "6x6", but I would not object to "5.6x.5.6" either--longer to write but more precise.

On the other hand, technically-speaking, most "6x9" cameras have frames whose dimension should in fact be rounded to 6x8 (because the long sides are usually bout 83mm), so those are slightly misleading. And "645" is really 64 or 642 or 5642. But all that is mostly history heavily infused with marketing hype. I'm not worried about it.

11 months ago*permalink

RGBCMYK

That is similar to film every calls 35mm but Kodak called it 135 film since the 1930's that took an image 24x36mm on film that was 35mm wide

11 months agopermalink