Focus

The problem with long-languishing projects left on the shelf is that eventually you need to face them. Lately I've gotten the notion to return to the old Kodak Autographic camera I picked up ages and ages ago, with the grand ambition of resurrecting it somehow. Here it is, sans bellows (see below) and with the lens board retracted.



Refitting it to take modern 120 film, for example, instead of the long-defunct 122 roll film format. Replace the disintegrating bellows. And, like so many of my good intentions, the scope of the work staggered me. The "to do" list looks like:

1. Remove lens and clean shutter
2. Remove and replace bellows
3. Acquire old 122 spools, somehow fit to 120 spools
4. Hope to the spirit of George Eastman that the camera is still light-tight
5. Take photos!

1. Remove lens and clean shutter

Doable enough, thanks to directions from the Net. Hey presto!




And you may remember "clean shutter" from a long-ago post. Here's the insides, if you want to marvel at it like I do:



Progress: COMPLETED

2. Remove and replace bellows

Removal, check:



Not surprisingly, Kodak didn't want you to remove the bellows from these cameras. Think iPhone battery, but in the 1920s.

These are were riveted into a metal plate around the lens, and are were held in place near the film by a set of menacing looking metal tabs. Oh, and they're so old and dry that they are literally crumbling.

Replacement is simple! First, build a time machine...

The collective wisdom of the Net shows DIY bellows made from leather, or light-blocking curtain fabric, or black Bristol board and duct tape. There's a lot of measuring, evidently. And creasing. And folding. And maybe even a bit of math.

Progress: FULL OF GOOD INTENTIONS IF NOT ACTUAL PROGRESS

3. Acquire old 122 spools, somehow fit to 120 spools

One of the Typosphere's own solved this problem years ago, and far more elegantly than I would have. A trip to eBay for spools and the dollar store for some sacrificial screwdrivers would do it.

Progress: SHAMELESSLY COPY, BEING SURE TO CALL IT A "TRIBUTE"

4. Hope to the spirit of George Eastman that the camera is still light-tight

[Cue sound of needle scratching across a record]

Yeah, about that.

So, aside from the century(?) old bellows having seen far better days, some previous owner mishandled this camera and dropped it right on the front corner. Part of the carriage that slides the lens forward and back is simply gone. And the rangefinder mirrors are cracked and bent. And that's only what I can see.

Replacing the bellows properly looks like a project unto itself. And for a camera that's been traumatized already, that will resist my "upgrades"... well, you can see why this got shelved.

Progress: SHIFT TO PLAN "B"

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Enter Plan B

Two things have me pulling the old Kodak and its part of the shelf again, working the shutter on the lens, looking at Bristol board, and pricing black cloth tape...

First, various people shooting by bodging antique or vintage camera lenses onto the front of their DSLR cameras. The results are rather dreamy and lovely to look at, and although the integrated shutter in this lens makes it far from suitable for re-use that way, it got me thinking about the marriage of old versus new.

Second, there's (no surprise) a very vibrant DIY camera movement out there. Joe Van Cleave's examples are lovely pieces of engineering and camera-making, especially his recent box/pinhole model, which got me thinking about old view cameras, to the point where I checked out a monster coffee table book from the library just to get more inspiration. And the one that's currently giving me the most hope, as in "hey I have all that stuff at home" is this Lego-and-paper-and-tape creation.

All of these examples are helping me attain something I so badly need: focus. Not getting bogged in particulars, and remembering that it doesn't take a ton of engineering to make an image.

So, the lens is off, the bellows are destined for the trash bin, and maybe, just maybe, one project will come off the shelf.

Cover Art Again: Mad Science Sunday

When last we left our intrepid self-publisher, I was trying to figure out how one might find an illustrator for one's book, and then received a lot of Excellent Advice from Rob Bowker, plus a swarm of email from very talented people. So, you say, what's happened since then?

Nothing! I say. Well, not quite nothing. I had an idea and a vision but lack the skills to make those a reality,  and then I found someone willing to try to combine the three, and then schedules and Real Life intervened in both our lives, and the whole thing went fizzle. You might remember this book from the hastily assembled default cover that I slapped up in CreateSpace:



Yeah, I don't like it either, but I was short on time and talent, and that's the best I could do.

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OK, now let's jump into some mad science. I've dabbled in carving rubber stamps from erasers -- though I can't find any reference to it on the blog -- and when I was a better pen pal, I'd thwock a couple impressions on the envelopes or the letter. The erasers come from the dollar store, and are cheaper and a lot more disposable than a piece of linoleum if I make a goof.

A few days ago I got the brilliant-in-my-own-mind idea to get a cheap picture frame to hold a number of these stamps together to either allow me to combine them an make a large stamp area, or to let me re-arrange them and do some sort of modular design. As I started playing around with the idea of multiple stamps, and laying them on top of each other, and cover art, and...

Wait a minute!



That red thing is the Speedball lino-carving set; the blades store in the handle. I started noodling around with a dragon stamp which you can see, and I'm sketching out the stamps for the rest of the cover. I've decided that this will be a hybrid stamp-and-scanner operation, but I'm pretty excited. I plan to carve out the titles today. Stay tuned.

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UPDATE:

This is your brain on a lot of carving. Oof. I think the bulk of it is done. Tomorrow, I work on getting clean impressions and a good scan, and then off to digital cleanup.