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Copyright 2000 Marcus Carlsson
About me
The pictures were taken by my homebuild large format camera. The negativ size is 8x10" and all of the pictures were contact printed. The reason that I built my own camera is: I got bored with the tiny format 24x36 so I started to build a pinhole camera and loaded it with 120 film. The camera was okay, but as you know the focus wasn't, so I started to search the Internet on how to build a Large format camera. I found Jon Grepstad's (see links) page. He sold me his book on how to build a 4x5" monorail camera. I strongly recommend it. It isn't easy to build a camera that you never have seen in real life. Since I have no possibility to enlarge 4x5" I thougt that an 8x10" would be better. I used Jon's blueprints and changed them to fit my demands. I used teak and the camera took six months to build and cost about $ 250. I also built the tripod myself and made both the ground glass and the bellow (see links). Pictures of the camera can be seen here.
If you haven't tried a large format camera I recommend it warmly. It changes your perspectives to photography totally. And since it takes a while to mount it all together and focus you become one with the subject. Normally the time to take a small format photo and to develop it isn't long and therefor one can forget what kind of feeling you want to "distribute". But when a photo takes up to two hours to take you won't just take three different photos and hope that one was okay.
On every page I have written my idea behind the photograph. I hope that you first of all see the picture and interpret it yourself. And after a while you can read the idea behind the picture.
Links
Jon Grepstad - I recommend his book on how to build a 4x5" monorail camera.
Doug Barnell - Has great instructions on how to build a bellow.
Last updated 2001-01-06
