A Homemade Camera That Uses Twenty Separate Lenses
What’s cooler than a multi-cell pinhole camera? How about a multi-cell pinhole camera upgraded to a lensed version? That’s exactly what James Guerin has put together as a follow-up to a previous lens-less camera experiment.
Simultaneously, the camera shoots twenty images with twenty lenses in twenty compartments. That’s a whole lot of twenties!
The added lenses (made of cheap plastic double convex) feature a focal length of 150mm, which are arranged in a grid, according to Guerin. “Due to the nested box design concertina style focusing is possible from a distance of 300mm (where 1:1 magnification is achieved) to approximately 550mm (overlapping of cells occurs).”
Guerin says that “accurate focusing is achieved with the aid of a simple ‘ground glass’ (perspex and scotch tape) and the shutter is a simple sliding plate.”
“I vary the aperture by placing custom ‘aperture plates’ that slide in front of the lenses. Of course the aperture changes depending on the focus draw, therefore I calculate my aperture for each shot by dividing the distance from lens to film by the diameter of my aperture disc (simple steel washers).”
Camera-to-subject distance of 300mm yields 1:1 magnification, thus a “normal” picture, but longer distances produce rather interesting effects.
Guerin says that most of the pictures he’s taken on the camera so far have been on photographic paper. He hopes to shoot portraits using 8×10 x-ray film in the near future.
Image credits: Photographs by James Guerin and used with permission
