My new Flintstone camera

This is my 5th selfmade camera, but all of them were different. The first 2 were 35mm Pinhole small cameras, I could sell one at ebay and the other I offered my smaller daugther who was very happy with it. The third one was a bellows camera with a binocular lens, without shutter or with hand shutter to expose paper. Later I adapted a guilhotine shutter made by my self but giving shaking images because it worked with rubbers horizontally. The camera is still here somewhere waiting for beeing repaired or used somehow.

In the 4th camera I used a Rollei back for 120 film and a Leica Leitz Elmar lens and a guillhotin shutter by gravity giving good images, only the Rollei back sticks a little, it needs some more tuning work. The camera is there more like a museum piece on a table in the corner. Works fine, only to return the guilhotine in the upper position you must close the lens and invert the whole camera and reset the trigger cable that when released, let the guilhotine fall. No shaking images at all, great shutter.

Now, my 5th camera started with a wooden box of the dimensions 12.7 x 8.8 x 8.1 cm with hinges and latch. I used a Vario shutter (which advantage is to have everything including flash synchronyzer). This shutter had no lens in it but looking in the box where I put all optic devices left over from other projects, I found a 100 mm lens that with some tuning in the distance to the film could serve. This is more or less easier to do if we use a lens board and regulate the distance by adding stuff between the box and the lens board. I choosed the size of the lens board so that I can use it in a professional Horseman 980 too.

The trickiest part is the back cover of the box that works perfectly to load a 120 film and take, not 6x6, but 5x5 pictures, due to the thickness of the used wood parts, mainly the frame which slides and is held in position by two small parts of nails on both sides. Well, for the rest just look the pictures, they are clear. I use in the first steps a kind of spring to prevent the roll to unwind during the loading process.

The Flintstone camera

Inside the Flintstone camera

Loading film in the Flintstone camera, 1.st step

Loading film in the Flintstone camera, 2.nd step

Loading film in the Flintstone camera, 3.rd step

Loading film in the Flintstone camera, 4th step

Film loaded in the Flintstone camera.