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Camera Page

Inspired by a friend's wooden Wisner 4"x5" field camera, I decided in 1992 to build a camera for my self. I had just seen my first Fuji 617 panoramic camera and I was hooked on the format. If you look with a critical eye, you will see that the camera I have produced is designed with the Fuji as a pattern.

The first camera made (which isn't shown on this page...maybe soon) was made of Cedar and took about 6 months of designing, building, testing and redesigning. Since I was starting from scratch, there were many obstacles to overcome. It was a fixed focus camera using a Rodenstock 135mm view camera lens. It gave roughly the same angle of view as a 24mm lens would on a 35mm camera. It worked wonderfully and has travelled with me and many of my friends pretty much around the world. Many of the picures in my gallery are from that Cedar camera. All my wooden cameras produce four 6cm x 17cm frames on a roll of 120 film. I utilize the numbering system on the paper backing of the 120 film for film advance, so 220 film cannot be used through my cameras.

Always trying to improve myself and inspired by some suggestions from other photographers, I redesigned the camera to the one you see on this page. It is now made of solid Canadian Black Walnut which greatly reduced the shutter shake problems that the lighter cedar camera sometimes had. Also, the denser wood was much easier to work with and gave me greater cutting control when working with it. Another critical new feature was the ability to focus the lens. Rodenstock had introduced a focus mount for view camera lenses, which I was able to work into the design of the new camera. This was the first such mount imported into North America. The picture to the right shows one of the cameras ready to accept the lens mount and hardware. Behind it you can see an earlier version that had been used to determine focal distances for the lens etc. The black tape is evidence that this camera had to be adjusted several times before I was able to transfer the proper measurements to the final camera in the foreground. I use solid brass door viewers for the rangefinder on the top of top of the camera body. I was able to find good quality viewers with glass optics at a local door and trim supplier. All the other hardware on the camera that I was able to purchase came from the Lee Valley Tools store here in London, Ontario. Other parts that I was unable to purchase had to be hand made to perform their proper function. The photo at left shows the film advance knob being machined to fit a standard 120 film spool. My metal lathe is made by Sherline tools, a company in California that specializes in precision miniature machinery. It is an excellent instrument and I would recommend it to anyone who appreciates a fine tool. When building a camera I generally use machinist's tools as traditional wood tools are far too coarse to accurately measure the tolerances required. I generally build to within 1/256th of an inch on the wood portions and 1/1000 of an inch for the optical components. Problems with sharpness and film tension tend to appear if parts are any looser than that. The finish on the camera is Minwax Wipe-on Poly which gives the best finish of any polyurethane I have ever used.