Building a 20×16-Inch Ultra-Large-Format Camera by Hand
South East England-based photography student Mark Hilton came up with an ambitious New Year’s resolution this year: he’s in the process of building his own 20×16 “ultra-large-format” camera by hand. It’s a camera that’s designed to expose Ilford Harman Direct Positive paper.
Construction kicked off last month when he began cutting and assembling the front and rear standards. There’s a circular hole for the lens in the front one, and inset frosted glass in the rear one.
Hilton’s camera uses a 240mm lens meant for 10×8 photography, but a -2 diopter turns it into a 500mm equivalent lens that works well as a portrait lens.
Hilton also spent a good deal of time putting together and folding bellows for the camera. The bellows compress to 50cm and extend to 130cm.
After putting all the pieces together, Hilton successfully made a photograph using the camera (it’s a 50 second exposure at f/5.6):
Hilton is planning to begin shooting with the camera soon. You can follow along with this camera’s progress and the resulting photos on Hilton’s blog.
Image creditsPhotographs by Mark Hilton and used with permission
