I built an Ultra Large Format Camera (and you can too)

Thanks very much for watching! I am very excited to share this project and to see what everyone thinks about it. Please let me know in the comments what questions and suggestions you have, and if you’d like to see more videos featuring the 11x14 camera. I’m really interested in getting as many people into hands on analog photography as possible, and my next goal is to make an accessible and easy to build 4x5 camera, that includes making the bellows, and putting together a cheap but capable lens, again with amazon parts and a little 3d printing. Feel free to subscribe if you are interested to see that!

I forgot to go into detail about price in the video and I hope that providing the screenshots with the materials will help in putting together some parts lists and ideas. Calculating it out now, the camera itself cost round $850 for the parts and pieces of the camera itself ($480 in parts from amazon and lens mount adapter from eBay, $50 in bellows materials, $60 for ground glass, $200 in wood since I got slightly pricier walnut from home depot, and $30 in other general hardware from home depot), the only other required parts are a lens (my lens was around $700, but there are much cheaper projector style lenses that will cover ultra large format) and film holders (you of course can make your own film holders from wood or even foam or plastic sheets, I appreciated the quality of the Fire Studio holders so bought 2 of those for $250 each, worth every penny) along with any other shooting accessories like the cable releases, level, and loupe.

For any curious, here is a Basic list of the parts I used for the focus and movements, none of it particularly brand specific, since they are standard arca parts for the most part they are made under many different brand names(I searched and picked what I felt was the best price or shipped as fast as I wanted it):

Arca Plates:
2x 400mm double rails (the long focusing rails)
1x 350mm single rail (connecting the two 400mm focusing rails)
1x 300mm single rail (the base of the rise/fall bracket)
2x 250mm double rails (the vertical sections of the rise/fall)
1x 180mm single rail (attaching the two L brackets together holding the pan/tilt head)

Sunway Photo 2-way pan/tilt head
2x arca L-brackets
5x 120mm Arca Clamps (these 120mm ones, that are shown in the screenshot in the video, are some of my favorites, always very affordable and available from multiple brand names)

Occasionally I would need some extra or longer ¼-20 camera mount screws.

I plan to make a shorter dedicated video on making bellows in the coming months. The bellows start as drawing or measured plans, there are some online tools that you can find to help. The drawing will outline the overall non-folded lengths of the four sides of the bellows and then lines with spacing added to show each of the individual ribs of the folds of the bellows. This drawing should then be printed onto a thick paper or cardstock, I use a Bristol board and in my case since the bellows are so large I glued an extra sheet of Bristol on after printing on my home 13x19 photo printer. Then, each of the ribs is carefully half cut out, taped to keep in place, and then fully cut out and separated into the four walls. The materials are the blackout vinyl (two layers of it in my case to ensure it is light tight) which is spray adhesive to the Bristol boards with an overlap on one side, then I used a simple green polyester tablecloth, which I tacked to my work table to keep it taut. Then the sprayed vinyl and Bristol sheet is adhered to that cloth, then folded, and the final edge overlapped and adhered down, then the whole unit is folded.

In regards to the paper negatives, my paper is Standard Ilford Multigrade RC Darkroom Paper, and it is developed for 3 minutes in standard Dektol paper developer. The addition of the 00 darkroom printing filter, which can be found by searching for multigrade filters set on ebay or b&h, significantly helps in the dynamic range of the paper. Particularly I am happy with the highlights, no longer worrying that they severely blown out and pure white.

Thanks again for watching and reading, and please share your questions and comments down below!

00:00 Introduction
01:45 Built in Tripod Legs
03:54 Opening the Camera and Front Standard
08:16 What's in the Bag
10:55 Film Holders
12:59 Custom 00 Filter in the Lens
14:00 Sourcing the Lens Mount
15:12 Focusing the Camera
16:33 The Spring Back
22:05 Leveling the Camera
23:29 The Focusing Mechanism
24:40 Light Meter Phone App
27:30 Experiments for Metering and Exposing Paper Negatives
30:51 Using the Camera in Zion National Park
32:29 Making the Bellows
35:32 Plans for an accessible DIY 4x5 Camera
38:08 Packing up the Camera
38:54 The Woodworking
40:42 Notes on Sourcing Parts and Modular Design
41:50 Extra Hardware
42:15 Storing the Legs
42:56 Conclusion