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This crazy looking DIY camera gives the full frame FOV and DOF equivalent of a 35mm f/0.4

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You can’t beat a good DIY crazy camera and they don’t get much crazier than this. Built by Matt at DIY Perks, this particular camera features a 432mm f/5 episcope lens with an image projection circle of around 500mm in diameter. To give you some idea of scale, your average full-frame lens has an image projection circle with a diameter of at least 43mm. That’s an area of 0.015 square meters. This lens has an image circle of 0.785 square metres (~50x the size).

And with this huge projection also comes a big advantage when it comes to depth of field. Despite being a 432mm f/5 lens, it offers the equivalent field of view and depth of field as a 35mm lens would on a full-frame camera if it had a maximum aperture of f/0.4. The closest lens to this designed for the relatively small full-frame format is the Zeiss 50mm f/0.7, and the last one of those to sell was rumoured to fetch around $200,000.

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I built a Frankenstein large format wet plate camera from scratch for photographing ghosts

Corrine at Corrine West Photography booked a wet plate workshop with me before the pandemic started. Two years later we were finally able to do it. The main subject was to get comfortable with the wet collodion process and to create images similar to the ones of spirit photographer William H. Mumler. Mr. Mumler created images (probably double exposures) where his clients could take a picture with their deceased relatives.

The photograph of Mary Todd Lincoln with the “ghost” of her husband (Abraham Lincoln) was his most famous one. Corrine found my double exposure wet plates and that was the reason she contacted me in the first place. About two months before the workshop Corrine surprised me with a question: “Can we build a wet plate camera together?”. I talked with a friend and after a long visit to a DIY market, I was sure that we can do it. A DIY Camera and capturing ghosts. That sounds like a fun workshop to me!

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Shooting Brenizer method portraits on medium format film to simulate a large format look

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The Brenizer method has been around for a while. In fact, it’s been around since long before it was called the “Brenizer method” – he was just the guy who made it popular so the name stuck. Essentially it’s a way to simulate the look of medium format film when shooting a small sensor camera like an APS-C or full-frame DSLR or mirrorless camera.

It’s a popular and well-known technique these days, but what happens when you shoot it with medium format film? Will it look like it was shot on large format? That’s what photographer Steve Schultz wanted to find out, so he shot some with his Mamiya 645 AF medium format film camera to see what happened.

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How I made a DIY remote mechanical cable release for my large format cameras

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If you have been reading my blog or watching my YouTube channel, you would know that I do mainly large format photography. I often take my own self portrait for using my pneumatic cable release that has a long cable and air bulb release.

However, I have always been thinking about how to make a more modern kind of remote cable release and hence this project.

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How to make a DIY Photo Enlarger from an Afghan box camera

In a previous post, I shared how I converted my Afghan Box Camera into a slide projector. The principle of the slide projector involves putting a light source at the back whose light passes through some condenser lens. The light then goes through the slide and finally pass the projector lens and be projected big on the projector screen.

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Shooting high end food photography on wet plate large format looks amazing

Everybody knows that I work exclusively on collodion wet plate portraits. So what’s the reason for food photography now? Let me try to explain. Many of you guys will remember that I bought a Cambo studio stand some while ago. A little bit later I bought a used tray for it on eBay. The seller was very friendly and somehow we started to talk about photography

Long story short, a month later we decided to do a project together. After months of planning, Hans Gerlach (a well-known food photographer and columnist) drove over to my studio and brought his tools and some delicious food with him.

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This DIY large format digital camera obscura shoots the most beautiful photographs

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The lure of large format photography attracts many. Relatively few can justify the cost of pursuing it, though. Even 4×5 sheet film gets pretty expensive, and that’s the smallest of the large formats out there. What if you could make one relatively inexpensively, though, and at the same time, avoid the hassle and cost of chemicals by shooting the results on your digital camera?

That’s exactly what photography Olexiy Shportun did when he created what is essentially a large format digital Camera Obscura. A lens is mounted in the front of the unit which projects the image onto a backplate, like a normal large format camera. But in this case, the backplate is a white surface where it’s then photographed by his mirrorless camera.

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How to make your own lenses with a cake mold and epoxy

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Ursula Ferrara has shown us some of her unusual and creative DIY projects before. And this time, this talented lady has raised DIY to a new level. Using only cake molds and some epoxy resin, she made her own large-format lenses and took some photos using them. She shares her process in a short video, so you can try it, too.

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Photographing wildlife with 4×5 large format camera and expired film

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These days, for sports and wildlife shooters, it seems the smaller sensor cameras are often favoured for the “extra reach” with long lenses. Most wildlife shooters I know, at least up until the days of mirrorless, were shooting fast APS-C DSLRs like the Nikon D500 and Canon 7D Mark II. Some have switched to Fuji and even Micro Four Thirds mirrorless.

But for some photographers, bigger is always better. And that certainly seems to be the case for Markus Hofstätter. We’ve featured Markus a bunch of times here on DIYP for his wet plate photography, but attempting to shoot wildlife on a 4×5 large format camera, especially with expired film is definitely a little… extra.

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I turned a 610mm World War II spy lens into a 10ft long large format macro camera

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You didn’t ask to learn about bellows extension factors but we’re going to cover it with the most absurd camera that you may ever see!

Built from over two sheets of plywood, scraps of 2x6s, old drywall screws, and the cheapest 610mm lens that I could find on eBay, literally every expense was spared. I would be surprised if I spent more than $200 out of pocket to create this 10′ behemoth.

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