Olexiy Shportun's profile

Ultra Large Format Digital Camera project

Large Format Digital Camera Project
Hello everyone from Ukraine! 
I want to share with you my method of photographing and, for a start, I suggest that you familiarize yourself with examples of photographs taken this way.
These photographs were taken with an Industar-37 large format lens. This lens is designed for photographing on 18x24cm photographic material (in fact, the image circle is larger and is about 30 cm in diameter). It is quite difficult to use it with a digital camera, because even if we mount it on the camera using an adapter, we will get only a small part of the image that it produces.
Therefore, I went the other way. I made a kind of camera obscura - the same obscura camera that painters used to create their paintings - but this camera is additionally equipped with a digital camera that captures the image that appears in it. Schematically it looks like this
The principle of operation is simple. A large format lens is placed on one side of the black-painted box. The image projected by it falls on a white focusing screen(as a screen, you can use ordinary white matte office paper or white cardboard for painting) located inside the box. A digital camera is located on the same wall as the lens, a little higher, and with the help of it, the image on the focusing screen is photographed through a hole in the wall.
Focal lengths are approximate
When creating a camera based on the Industar-37 lens, you can make a focusing screen with a size of 40x40cm when focusing at infinity. The distance from the lens to the focusing screen when focusing at infinity is 30cm. When focusing on closer subjects, it is necessary to increase the distance from the lens to the focusing screen. For example, for a bust portrait, this distance will be about 50cm. When refocusing, it is also necessary to change the tilt angle of the digital camera and the focal length of the lens installed on it (it is recommended to use a zoom lens).
I also want to add that I use a tiltable focusing screen to achieve the Scheimpflug effect.
For obvious reasons, a digital camera photographs the focusing screen slightly at an angle. This leads to perspective distortions that are easily corrected in post processing.

This kind of camera can be created in various ways. You can see some of the options in our Facebook group. And you can find out how my camera is arranged from the video.
You can see my other works in my Instagram. And also you can subscribe to a group dedicated to the creation of the Digital Camera Obscura and questions dedicated to it (unfortunately the Facebook administration blocked the group for absolutely inexplicable reasons).
You can support the project by buying one (or several) of my photos or simply by transferring money to my paypal - politptaha@gmail.com
Thank you for your attention!
Ultra Large Format Digital Camera project
Published:

Ultra Large Format Digital Camera project

Published: