Interesting LF Camera Idea

An interesting read on the website, and a good price too.

Thanks for the links.
 
Interesting... gets me on two counts... photography and product design....

Thing is though....... $99.... yeah sounds cheap... but that's NOT for a fully functioning, ready to shoot camera.... what you are getting for you're cash... is a black tuppaware box....

To get pictures from it... well unless you want to use the pin-hole and a lens cap... you need a lens, and one its designed around has been out of production for half a century! Reletively easy to come by though, but two and a half times the price of the 'camera'!... add a dark slide and to take a photo, by 'F16 Sunny' guide-line... your tuppaware has no metering.... you'd have to have spent about $400....

That's not quite so cheap really.... especially for a camera with a 50+ year old second hand lens!

I remember 20 years ago, series in one of the photo-mags; "Make your own Field Camera".... and realistically, its old rotten field cameras that are likely to provide these old lenses.... OK, not so compact and portable, but as much 'Camera' as they are selling for ooooh...... penies really! Seem to recall the article suggested that using a bit of inginuity, and searching second hand and charity shops for old bellows cameras to pillage a lens from, and using off-cuts of marine ply from a boat-builders and felt from the market... you could knock up a good field camera for under £30, or from a 'kit' for under £100 lens included.

THAT would be a 'Cheap' large format camera....

As an engineering excersize, and specifically as a 'traveling' hand-held camera; I think I would have aproached the brief differently.

The lens is the expensive bit, and for all the optical quality of the Sniednier they suggest, it's not particularly fast, and if I remember correctly, the range of shutter speeds wasn't too great.

Technically and commercially, tackling manafacture of a 'reproduction' field camera lens, potentially exploiting chinese or eastern-european manufacture for cost cutting, would be more 'worthy'... and I think, to make a 'complete' consumer traveling camera, looked possibly to a bellows construction, again, utilising Chinese or east-Euro man'f.

Possibility, I suppose is endless; and I dont know; cheap consumer electronics? Possibility of integrating a ttl meter of even some AE functionality, might be interesting; certainly suggest a far more consumer friendly product, for their suggested target market.... which they suggest isn't necesserily camera buffs or existing photographers even, let alone experienced film photographers.

And on that score, I think that, THIS particular product might actually be a little bit of a let-down, and get a lot of people exited and interested in the 'idea' of both film and large format... then leave them utterly frustrated, dissapointed and underwhelmed.... when they recieve thier black tuppaware box.... discover that they have to buy a lens seperately, and its suddenly not 'so' cheap.... and worse, they have to drill and mount that lens... possibly badly, potentially introducing light leaks and tilt distortions... THEN start shooting with it, without a meter... and start wasting frames on a hit and miss trial and error basis.... of getting completely overwhelmed reading the manual!

Innovation either comes from a technological break-through, and manufacturer offering it to the market, or the market having a need, the manufacturer designs a product to fullfill....

They have err... neither really! I think its a great idea.... but there's too many loop-holes, and they are working from the middle out, rather than one end or other.
 
Personally I wouldn't waste my money...

It's $99, yes but without the lens. It's pinhole ready? There's not a chance I'd waste a LF frame of colour on a pinhole. MF maybe, but certainly not LF.

The above post really sums it up rather well. Save your money and get a MF "P&S", not LF.

I find it rather frustrating as well, because I very much want sheet film to stay alive. If people are game for this idea then that's fantastic. I personally wouldn't waste the money though.
 
I know its not perfect but it does state very plainly that you only get the camera for $99 and if it sells a few thousand units surely that's helping to keep 5 x 4 film alive. Also, as with many start up businesses if the original idea makes enough money it will allow development of the product. I think its OK, a reasonably cheap way of getting into LF and its neat enough to carry around in the hand.
Are we sure we aren't just dismissing it out of snob value? :lol:
I thought the images from it looked pretty good and under the right conditions with a tripod it could produce some decent images. I know that this would negate its main point of being portable but its dual purpose.
 
I think you guys probably need to put this into perspective and think of what everyone was saying about the Walker Titan pinhole, which is £135ish and can only take pinholes:nono:

This is a pretty good little camera body which is small, lightweight and extremely cheap. Yes it doesn't include a £150 lens for $99 which is pretty understandable, but it does include a helical focusing mount:clap:. This talk of including a lens they produce themselves via cheaper manufacturing is crazy, the cost of a shutter alone is around $400 from a company whose main product is shutters, the idea these guys could design, prototype and produce one for less is crazy. The talk of having to drill the camera to mount the lens is also absolute nonsense; the camera is predrilled as you can see if you actually watch the video.

The camera has no movements, but that's not what it's designed for. It's designed as a hand held, light weight camera for snapshots or inclusion alongside other activities. If you want a home made field camera from a kit then by all means to for it, however I wouldn't touch one with a barge pole:gag:, the chances of someone being able to make it sufficiently rigid and sufficiently accurately to have acceptable and reproducible alignment of the standards has to be pretty low, a problem this thankfully doesn't suffer from. The only problem I see is that you would have to pay import duty on it, which is annoying :bang:

I appreciate its not everyone's cup of tea, but some of the objections fly in the face of what the camera is designed to do, it's like complaining an ULF camera doesn't do 10fps with matrix metering and that its a bit too heavy to handhold :D
 
raathistle said:
but it does include a helical focusing mount
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These on their own are normally from £100 upwards.

I think it's a clever design - especially the filmholder clip and it's aimed at people who probably already have a suitable lens. The fact that they are so close to their target means that a lot of people think it's a good enough idea to spend the money.

EDIT: Actually, they have exceeded their target of $75,000 and now have $82,000 pledged so well done to them!


Steve.
 
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Well said Chris and Steve. Its only the fact that its $40 extra for shipping and having to pay import duty thats stopping me having one of these. Oh and the wife.....:whistling:

Andy
 
i think its a great idea :) best of luck to them. Its pretty clear you need to get a lens separately and you can come across bargains.

I wouldn't knock anyone buying a compact because it doesn't do as much as my D800. I might just get one for giggles, import duty wouldnt be that much.
 
Interesting idea, little baffled why they didn't scale it down to shoot medium format only as carrying around a load of 5x4 darkslides isn't exactly portable.
 
You can just use a roll film back on it Rob. The main problem is you would struggle to find a cheap lens to use in a more MF like focal length. Theres the 65mm angulons or the 75mm lenses but they ain't cheap, and anything below that gets pricey

Using specific camera make lenses would be a struggle too as they aren't as easy to bodge into a workable solution as a LF lens which just works right out of the box.

A nice 50mm 612 would be a thing of beauty though :D
 
there's a import calculator somewhere online, think you looking at 20% plus handling 11quid, plus duty
 
Clever clogs:D
 
I know this is going off topic a bit, but our local Oxfam has an "antique camera and accessories". It's a wooden LF camera (bellows, movable lens etc) with two film holders, a Ross lens and aperture (couldn't see more through the glass cabinet), wooden tripod and canvas case, also a notebook of the kind that Roland mentioned, maybe a few other things. I wrote stuff down but then lost my bit of paper! The bad news? £750!
 
Depends what it is, is its a Deardorff, Zone VI or similar known maker thats probably about right to a little cheap. If it's an old half plate or similar then it's a bit steep
 
I went back to Oxfam and asked, and had a look. There is no name on the body, and a suggestion that it may have been hand built. There is a photographer's notebook with it; inside is a hand-written name (illegible) and a date that looks like 86, plus a pasted calendar for 1887. (It's not certain this book goes with the camera, but it seems pretty likely.) There are a few entries that suggest exposure times were typically measured in seconds. One of the things I didn't notice yesterday was a little pouch containing various sized cut-out circles, presumably slot-in apertures! The lens is Ross of London, brass, with some kind of motto on it that I couldn't easily read. No focal length but "6 1/2 X 8 1/2" inscribed on the lens. No sign of any shutter. No fungus visible, but quite a lot of dust!

Very interesting, but not for me...
 
ChrisR said:
I went back to Oxfam and asked, and had a look. There is no name on the body, and a suggestion that it may have been hand built. There is a photographer's notebook with it; inside is a hand-written name (illegible) and a date that looks like 86, plus a pasted calendar for 1887. (It's not certain this book goes with the camera, but it seems pretty likely.) There are a few entries that suggest exposure times were typically measured in seconds. One of the things I didn't notice yesterday was a little pouch containing various sized cut-out circles, presumably slot-in apertures! The lens is Ross of London, brass, with some kind of motto on it that I couldn't easily read. No focal length but "6 1/2 X 8 1/2" inscribed on the lens. No sign of any shutter. No fungus visible, but quite a lot of dust!

Very interesting, but not for me...
Click to expand...

wow...that would be a wonderful item to own and use.... but at that price a bit too rich for me too.
 
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