Wooden Camera

From XPUB & Lens-Based wiki


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I created a camera with an ambition to capture high-speed dynamic objects.

I can never forget one photo about a drop of water frozen in the air captured by my first DSLR when I was 17. I was interested in learning the balance between shutter speed and the speed of moving objects. This interest leads me to create an analogue camera with a high-speed shutter. I want to test the maxima speed of dynamic objects it can capture.

During this session, I also gained more knowledge about camera history, details about the structure of cameras and how to wash the pictures in the darkroom.

The shutter board plays a prominent part in the design, there are two holes on it that can make double exposure and it attributes to the improvement of the shutter speed. I spent a lot of time on sanding the board to make it thinner and smoother. In order to push it as quick as possible, I added the locker on both sides of the shutter board to avoid unnecessary exposure while pulling it back. So I always flip the camera body to shoot continuously. Is the lens basically made by only one piece of mirror from a 55mm Nikker lens. Images captured from this lens are slightly distorted on corners but most of them are still sharp at least.

I took my photo near the Markthal. I hold my camera tightly in my arms to remain steady while push the shutter board. I first focused on a few static objects with normal shutter speed and then shot dynamic objects with a rather higher speed. The appearance of static objects on the film is mostly overexposed and the hole on the shutter left two white lines, but the image is sharp and less stretched. Meanwhile, photos of dynamic objects are mostly exposed correctly and showed more details, there are no obvious sketches left by the shutter, but the quicker I pushed the shutter the more stretched the photo was.

I need to improve the stabilization system of my camera; it can reduce the pressure from pushing shutter to keep the photo sharp and clear.

Dynamic objects


static objects