Of special interest is a 1901 ad for the Kodak No. 2 Brownie (see a larger version from the source). As many know (and as I’ve written about before), Kodak launched an entirely new roll size for this camera, called 120—the same 120 film we’re still using today.

Kodak Brownie No. 2 ad, 1901 “Youth’s Companion” magazine

The No. 2 Brownie took 2-1/4 x 3-1/4 inch photos (aka 6×9 cm). But it’s interesting that the film length was originally shorter: Only 6 shots (today’s 120 would give 8).

Kodak had introduced an earlier Brownie using film size 117, at the startlingly low price of $1—making an all-out effort to sell cameras simple and cheap enough for children. So it’s not an accident that this ad uses an image of the curious little girl and her schoolbooks. (But what is the deal with that hat?!?)

The name “Brownie” and that scary figurine appearing on the table refer to a series of children’s illustrations drawn by Palmer Cox, very popular with children of the era. It’s not clear whether Kodak actually licensed any drawings from Cox, or merely created their own elf-like Brownie illustrations (which to be fair, had originated from Scottish folklore).

I have always wondered if the Brownie name was also a tip of the hat to Kodak’s original camera design wizard, Frank Brownell.

Compared to the original Brownie, the No. 2 took larger photos and, significantly, included a viewfinder! Two, actually—allowing you to frame photos horizontally or vertically. This helped justify the doubled, $2 price tag. With this addition, the No. 2 became the template for thousands of cheap box cameras to follow—both from Kodak, and its competitors, like Ansco.

Eventually the 120 size was taken up by other, top-quality cameras: First the Rolleiflex and later the Hasselblad. Both of these helped cement the reputation of 120 as a “serious camera” film.

But the association between 120 and Brownies remained, enough so that in Japan, many kept referring to the size as “Brownie film.” And in 1958, this inspired a name for Zenzaburo Yoshino’s innovative new 120 camera—called the Bronica.

Let’s hope 120 film survives somehow until at least the year 2021—in time to celebrate its 120th birthday.

A moment of thought should convince you that the curve must be a section of a sphere. That’s the only shape where the two surfaces will always stay in contact as they move. Any high points that deviate from a sphere would eventually be ground away.

This is the reason why a spherical surface is the easiest (and least expensive) curve to manufacture glass lenses to.

This insight is well understood by many old-school amateur astronomers, the ones who go through the long process of grinding their own telescope mirrors. But there’s a problem: the figure actually required for a telescope mirror is not a section of a sphere—it’s actually a parabola.

Although the difference between the two is infinitesimal, the telescope-builder needs to hand-polish subsections of the mirror to reach the right final shape. And the polishing and testing to reach this special curve accounts for a large fraction of the total labor required. The effort turns the optical surface into an aspherical one—simply meaning, any curve that deviates from a simple sphere.

Camera lenses are made using multiple glass elements (at least three are needed for a reasonably aberration-free image). Those surfaces are typically all spherical. But an “aspheric” camera lens includes one of these specially-polished aspheric surfaces (or in rare cases, a couple of them).

Why Aspherical?

But since aspherical surfaces are harder to manufacture, they cost more. So why use them?

A recent aspherical lens

There’s a misconception, often repeated in internet discussions, that aspherical surfaces are needed to “correct spherical aberration.” This statement is very misleading.

We should back up and explain that spherical aberration is when light rays passing through the edge of a lens focus at a different distance than ones from the center. This is mostly undesirable, because then the fine details of your photo subject will lack contrast. (We should note, however, that a bit of uncorrected spherical aberration can improve a lens’s bokeh.) Spherical aberration is particularly hard to cure at fast f/ratios, since the ray paths must bend so steeply at the edges of the lens.

A lens designer needs to balance many factors when creating a new product. There are multiple aberrations to correct, across the whole image, including spherical aberration. But there are also issues of weight, size, and manufacturing cost to consider.

It’s easier to design a good lens when you have more “degrees of freedom.” The more different glass types you can add, and the more surface curvatures you can tweak, the more flexibility you have to cancel out aberrations.

So if a lens design has enough complexity, it can give perfect correction of spherical aberration—even using only spherical surfaces. But it may prove impractically large and expensive to manufacture.

What aspheric surfaces offer is simple: More degrees of freedom.

An aspherical surface can improve a lens design without adding extra glass. Computer ray-tracing can adjust the curvature across an element’s width, reducing all aberrations (spherical being just one). If an aspherically-polished surface can replace three or five spherical ones, it can justify its cost—yielding a smaller, lighter lens that may be be less prone to flare.

Long ago, aspheric lenses were pretty exotic: Polishing the special shapes required lots of extra labor. However technology has moved on, and now there are automated processes that can produce good-quality non-spherical surfaces. As a result, aspheric optics have gone mainstream.

A compact 35mm f/1.7 lens with one aspheric surface

So aspheric lenses aren’t made from some crazy unobtanium, and they don’t have magical powers. They’re just a way to build a better lens using fewer elements, and that’s all.

All the factory equipment was subsequently auctioned off and scattered to the four winds—seemingly spelling doom for Polaroid integral films (meaning the most popular, squarish 600 format; and the rectangular Spectra/Image type).

Why is the Polaroid lady twisting her own head off her body?

Fujifilm continues to produce “peel-apart” instant films which are compatible with some Polaroid cameras and backs. Ironically this means certain 1960s Polaroid cameras will remain usable longer than the ubiquitous recent Polaroid OneStep and One600 models. (The 1960s cameras do require a weird-sized battery, however.)

Fuji also makes its own line of integral instant films called “Instax.” However Instax technology is completely different from Polaroid’s, and none of those films are compatible with any Polaroid camera.

To re-create Polaroid’s 600 film from scratch would be a complex and costly process (remember that each pack also contains a special flat battery). It’s doubtful Fujifilm would have a motive to take on that challenge, when they already makes a competing product. There are not many other players in the market with the technical expertise to revive integral film; so unless some mystery savior appears, we should assume 600 and Spectra are disappearing for good.

Earlier this year, the best deal I could find on 600 film was from OfficeDepot’s online store. However for many weeks there has been no more stock available to my Zip code; and anecdotally that seems to be true for other regions of the US too.

So this week I stopped off at a local Target store—in my area, this is the last bricks-and-mortar retailer with decent quantities of 600 remaining. I got two serious shocks: First, the price had been raised to US $17 a pack (yes, that’s $1.70 per photo); and second, the expiration date on the packs was “09/09.”

09/09 is the mark of the End Times

Why is that date significant? A group of Dutch Flickr members toured the Enschede factory in May, two weeks before it shut down; and the date code they saw on finished packs was 09/09. Note that this is actually later than the “Aug 09″ final expiration date listed in Polaroid’s own phase-out announcement.

Apparently there may have been one final week’s production stamped with the expiration date “10/09.” Packs with that date are now available at the European “PolaPremium” website.

This new operation has made a splash selling small batches of various unusual Polaroid films, produced in the factory’s final days. (Some have questioned whether these special products were simply a way to use up old or substandard chemistry. I have no firsthand experience with these films; and considering the shipping charges to the USA, I don’t plan to try them.)

In any case, the message to Polaroid fans is clear. If you see packs with the date code 09/09, assume it’s your last chance to buy them. Ever.

(Well okay. I’m sure gouging profiteers on eBay will have packs to sell for the next few years—but at grossly inflated prices.)

So look deep within your soul (and your bank balance), and decide what it’s worth to you, to save a few final packs for special occasions.

Remember that the life of Polaroid films can be extended a few years past their expiration date by keeping them in the fridge. (Don’t put them in the freezer, because you can wreck the vital developer goo pods which form the image.)

Expired Polaroid film can lend interesting quirks to an image, due to color shifts and fading; or the image can be streaked or incompletely developed. But once film packs are many years out of date, they begin to fail entirely. Batteries die, or the developer pods dry out.

So don’t go hoarding more film than you would shoot in the next 2-3 years. You would just be taking precious shots away from another Polaroid-lover, who might be able to use it.

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Update 19 Dec. 2008: Just as I posted this, the Polaroid corporation announced it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The reasons have little to do with instant photography; but the company’s troubles make the future of the Polaroid brand even murkier.

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Update February 2009: Yes, I have heard the excited talk about The Impossible Project to restart integral film production. It turns out some of the essential factory equipment was saved after all. I will be curious to see how it pans out. Here’s a good podcast radio interview with the technical head of the project.

Remember, they have numerous engineering hurdles to overcome before any film reaches shelves; once it does, it’s likely to be “quirky” emulsions at high prices.

Most rely on a well-proven Gaussian formula, whose nearly-symmetrical configuration automatically reduces certain aberrations like barrel distortion. The fast maximum aperture provides several benefits: A bright viewfinder image that “snaps” into focus, and the potential for pleasingly shallow depth of field.

Some photographers prefer a slightly wider lens as their “normal,” but on the 135 film format the typical 50mm focal length yields a very natural, neutral perspective.

Fast “normal” lenses—why are they such rarities in digital photography?

When one looks at the lens options for digital SLRs, however, the choices become a little murkier. By default, most DSLRs come equipped with kit zooms, with unavoidable penalties in lens size and maximum aperture. Many of these reveal quite obvious barrel distortion when zoomed to their widest setting.

On the other hand, fast 50mm primes are still offered by most cameramakers—as holdovers from their earlier film-camera lens lineups. Yet on a typical DSLR with a cropped-format sensor, these stop being “normal.” Instead they function as short portrait lenses.

That’s useful in many cases, to be sure; but it’s not the classic “all rounder” lens that 50mm represents on a traditional film camera. True, Sigma does offer a 30mm f/1.4 designed as a normal for cropped-format DSLRs; but its near-$500 pricetag is quite a shocker compared to past film-camera equivalents.

Recently, my eye was caught by an Olympus DSLR, the E-420. With this model Olympus has finally delivered on their original promise of very compact camera bodies through the use of a new “Four-Thirds” sensor format, one about half the width of 35mm film. In fact the E-420 is one of the few DSLRs whose size compares to the classic Olympus OM series of film bodies.

And even better, Olympus was pairing it with a new (non-zoom) lens—an impressively-tiny 25mm f/2.8 pancake. This focal length yields “normal” coverage on the smaller sensor format.

But an f/2.8 maximum aperture is hardly going to set pulses racing among serious available-light enthusiasts. And unfortunately, a recent lens test at DPReview.com shows that the new pancake is only a middling performer. Even this digital-specific, blank-slate design showed significant barrel distortion, as well as (freakishly) chromatic aberration even near the center of the frame.

Olympus is known for making some of the best-respected DSLR lenses today; yet their struggle was to design a well-corrected lens when the flange-to-sensor distance is significantly longer than the focal length. The classic symmetrical configurations don’t work in that case; so various optical shenanigans are required which inevitably degrade performance.

At this year’s Photokina photo trade show, Panasonic caused a great deal of buzz with an announcement of their Lumix G1. Panasonic seems to have recognized that the Four-Thirds format has never gained much traction with enthusiast DSLR buyers; yet it would offer consumers vast improvements in image quality over today’s teeny-chipped point’n’shoots, if only the camera body could be shrunk to acceptable size.

Panasonic’s way to achieve this was to omit the reflex mirror entirely (meaning only electronic viewfinders are possible), then halve the flange-to-sensor distance. This is the essence of a new “Micro Four-Thirds” standard, of which the the G1 is the first example coming to market (shortly).

Olympus showed their own prototype of a Micro Four-Thirds camera, made even more compact by omitting any eye-level viewfinder. This emphasis on small body styles has led some to hail Micro Four-Thirds as the arrival of the “digital rangefinder”—i.e. very compact cameras with interchangeable lenses.

Photo: 1854, the blog of the British Journal of Photography

Even the ribbed lens of the Olympus prototype seems reminiscent of certain 1970s compact RFs, like the much-loved Canonet QL17 GIII. (Note that the BJP article calls the prototype an “SLR,” which it is not: “R” stands for “reflex” viewing, precisely what Micro Four-Thirds models lack.)

But to me the most intriguing footnote to these announcements is buried in Panasonic’s future “Lens Roadmap.” In 2009, allegedly they will introduce a non-zoom, 20mm f/1.7 lens in Micro Four-Thirds mount. If we translate that to its equivalent on 135 film, this would be a fast 40mm lens—actually, just like 1972’s Canonet!—with a “wide normal” coverage that I would personally love. And because of the reduced flange-to-sensor distance, its optical design might even be a simpler, well-corrected symmetrical design.

So will compact, fast, well-corrected normal lenses come to digital, at long last? At a price we can afford? This remains to be seen, though I’m cautiously hopeful. But for the moment, virtually any random 35mm SLR from the past, equipped with its humblest possible lens option, offers something that remains a rarity in the world of digital.

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Update February 2009: Might Nikon be listening?

I had been taking photographs for over 30 years before ever hearing the term; and at first it confused me too. However it turns out that bokeh refers to quite a specific aspect of lens blur—calling attention to subtle phenomena that might otherwise be overlooked.

Unfortunately though, the meaning of “bokeh” has been getting rather blurred itself lately. We ought to make a stand to preserve its specific technical meaning, before this useful term degenerates into just another name for “fuzzy.”

A corny flower shot shows nice bokeh from a rotten plastic lens (on a vintage Diana)

Now don’t get me wrong—photographs which use selective focus to give nicely blurred backgrounds can be very pleasing. I like this effect, and have written about how to get it. And because many of today’s digital cameras limit your ability to achieve this look, a photo with shallow focus and a creamy blurred background will often attract many admiring comments about “great bokeh!”

But bokeh is NOT a synonym for “blurry background,” or “shallow depth of field.” It actually has little to do with the amount of blur. The degree of blur you see in out-of-focus areas is essentially a function of geometry—the relationship between the aperture’s diameter and its distance from the subject. Lets say you’re taking a portrait from 4 feet away using a 50mm lens at f/4. Every brand and every design of 50mm lens will render the background with the same amount of blur. But to the connoisseur, two different lenses may yield violently different bokeh.

Bokeh refers to the subjective quality of the blur. Is it “jangly” and busy-looking, or creamy and smooth? Do out-of-focus highlights have odd, distracting shapes, or are they unobtrusive circles? Does the blurred area seem to “swirl” around the center of the photo in arcs? These are some of the factors which might be mentioned as aspects of the bokeh for a particular lens. And these may be the reasons why a serious bokeh geek would chose one particular lens over a different brand with otherwise identical specs.

The word “bokeh” officially entered the English language in 1997, in an issue of the magazine Photo Techniques—whose editor Mike Johnston decided to add the final ‘h’ to make the pronunciation less ambiguous. He tells the story here, and includes some interesting photos showing different subjective effects in various blurred backgrounds.

Where does Bokeh come from?

But WHY might different lenses have different bokeh signatures? Well, there are two effects.

Each point of light from an unfocused area of the subject forms an extended bright patch at the image plane. Conventionally we call this a ‘blur disk,’ as if these were always circular; but really the blur spot takes on the same shape as the lens’s aperture stop. If the diaphragm blades form a 6- or 8-sided “stop-sign” shape (as SLR lenses typically do), so will the blur spot.

A most extreme example of this happens with mirror telephoto lenses, which have a central obstruction: Their blur disks are fuzzy doughnuts. This creates exceptionally distracting bokeh, if there are pinpoint highlights to accentuate it.

This crop from an Olympus XA shot shows busy diamond-pattern bokeh, matching the shape of the camera’s simple 2-blade aperture stop

Also, if a lens’s barrel design obstructs the more oblique light rays, the effective aperture opening becomes progressively more football-shaped towards the corners of the frame. This often leads to a “swirly” background effect if the lens is used at wide apertures.

The other issue has to do with a subtlety of optical design; namely, whether the blurred light ends up more concentrated at the middle of the blur disk or at its edges. A bright rim to the blur disk generally leads to distracting, jangly-patterned bokeh. But note that this effect often reverses depending on whether the subject is in front or behind of the focus point.

Both these effects are discussed in much detail in this excellent article (it is actually one of the original 1997 Photo Techniques articles mentioned above).

A blur disk with the light concentrated more towards its center will generally lead to smoother, creamier bokeh—and ironically one way to achieve this is to create a lens design which leaves some uncorrected spherical aberration. That compromises overall sharpness, so lens designers usually avoid it.

But there have been some specialized soft-focus lenses manufactured that exploit the effect; and it’s the reason why a plastic piece-of-junk camera often gives such dreamily smooth blur where the subject is out of focus, like in the Diana daisies shot I posted above.

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Update: This page from Rick Denny compares the bokeh from several lenses of similar focal lengths; it illustrates very well how differently each renders out-of-focus highlights (scroll down the page to the photographs).

The film ends with some rather cosmic commentary by Philip Morrison, who also collaborated on the classic Eames film Powers of Ten.

Vox sez, “check it out.”

Yet there are a couple of problems with the OneSteps. First, most models were very basic, plasticky, fixed-focus cameras, not offering much versatility. The second problem is that their frame-counting mechanism locks the shutter after 10 shots. If you’re shooting multiple exposures onto each frame, at some point you’ll need to remove the film pack in a dark room to re-set the counter, which is inconvenient.

Polaroid’s SX-70 models were much more sophisticated than the OneSteps. They featured a compact, collapsible body, a good-quality glass lens, and true SLR focusing all the way down to 10″. However they’re a bit tricky to disassemble, so the “kill switch” mod I described earlier would be rather complicated to try on an SX-70.

An SX-70—even a thrashed one like my white model 2—is a sleeker, nicer camera than any of Polaroid’s OneStep models.

But Flickr user amalia chimera called my attention to a YouTube video by her friend Brian (whose demonstration of double-exposures on a Spectra camera I had previously linked to). In a second video he shows a technique for fooling SX-70 cameras to make double-exposures possible.

Basically, the trick is this: An SX-70 has an interlock so that if the film door is open, the shutter and eject motor won’t operate. However by pressing the door-sensor lever with a narrow tool, you can take a shot even with the door open. Because the feed rollers are disengaged then, the print does not get ejected and developed. You can nudge the print back into the pack and make a second exposure.

An SX-70 does require an exposure adjustment to use 600 film. But that’s a minor problem. And I would much rather shoot with an SX-70 than a cheesy OneStep, so Brian’s technique really excited me. Plus, no permanent surgery to the camera was needed. So here’s a few refinements and additions to what Brian’s video shows.

Start by cutting a bit of kitchen match or barbecue skewer so that it’s exactly 41mm long. (I’ll explain the reason for the piece of tape later.)

When you open the camera’s film door, you will see a small, dull gray piece of folded metal on the left edge—directly below the plastic ribbon cable. There is a peg on the film door which rises up behind this when the camera is closed; it lifts a small black plastic lever. This is the switch we need to “fool” with our special tool.

By using a stick exactly 41mm long, we can brace it against the film door’s light baffle and keep the switch pressed upwards.

With the switch overridden, you can take your first exposure without ejecting the print. Because you might walk around in full daylight for some time before finding the right subject, there’s a risk of light leaking into the front edge of the film pack. If you’d prefer to avoid this, you can wrap the front of the camera with a shroud of black cloth, paper, etc.

Cloth shroud held in place with rubber band

One of the many clever features of the SX-70 is that any adjustment made to the lighter-darker dial would be reset to zero whenever the camera was folded. However you will probably find your double exposures will look too washed out if you don’t set the dial towards the darker end of the scale before shooting. It’s a slight annoyance that you have to remember to do this every time you open the camera.

Remember to turn the exposure dial towards the black!

When you take your first image, about 1/8″ of the print edge is shoved out of the film pack. Ordinarily this would feed it into the rollers, which spread the chemical goo inside the print and start development. But we’ve prevented this.

It’s extremely important that you shove the print edge as far back into the film pack as possible, behind its flexible plastic light shield, until no more white is visible. Otherwise you run the risk of the camera ejecting two prints at once, spoiling both. But the wood stick we cut turns out to be a handy tool for nudging the print back into place.

Try to go somewhere in dim light before shoving the print edge back into the pack, since this is the stage where you’re most likely to flash the bottom of the image with light leaks. But I’ve become kind of fond of the “row of teeth” light effect you sometimes get from this (seen in the sample image below).

Now close the film door and shoot the second image. As I noted last time, any bright area in your subject tends to blow out whatever detail might have appeared in the other image. Experiment with leaving lots of dark, blank areas in the frame to give the clearest “double-iness” to the final photo. The SX-70’s extra-close focusing can help you isolate simple and uncluttered subjects.

A happy discovery was that an SX-70 does not lock the shutter after 10 exposures (at least, my Model 2 doesn’t). The frame counter goes down to 0 shots and stays there; but you can keep on clicking until all the prints in the pack are used up. But it’s up to you to keep track of the correct count, of course.

Remember that piece of tape wrapped around the stick? Here’s one more tip: You can always keep your double-exposure tool handy by taping it under the SX-70 viewfinder hood. There’s enough space at the back end to allow the viewfinder to fold normally; and the stick won’t get lost this way.

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If you need an impromptu light table, just open a blank document/browser window on your laptop (or LCD desktop monitor). Sweet!

In today’s dark times waiting for the End of Polaroid, pack film may be our one remaining bright note. Because Polaroid’s older patents have expired, Fujifilm was able to introduce a line of instant films that are drop-in replacements, fitting all the same cameras and backs. And better yet, they’re cheaper than most Polaroid options.

One of Polaroid’s peel-apart film types, number 669, is cherished for its odd color tonality and workability for emulsion-lift techniques—regrettably there does not seem to be any direct Fuji replacement for this. But otherwise, my early tests with Fuji’s FP-100C color packfilm seem promising. I have heard much praise for their B&W emulsions too, but have not tried them myself.

We can’t know how long Fuji will continue making these films, of course. But my speculation is that with their setup costs already paid and their only competitor leaving the market, Fuji’s packfilm will be the one remaining “Polaroid” material available in the coming years.

As I’ve complained before, most of the amateur-grade cameras sold by Polaroid itself were rather uninspired. Most featured slow, pedestrian-quality lenses and have no option for manual exposure control. Polaroid did make a handful of “professional” manual-exposure models like the 180 & 195; Or the 600SE (basically an adapted Mamiya press camera). But the relative scarcity of these models keeps their prices high on the used market even today.

However, the company produced millions of consumer folding models—all of which used essentially the same standardized film back and bellows assembly. Just start looking around at yard sales and camera swaps, and you’ll find numerous 100-, 200-, 300-, and 400-series cameras, generally at giveaway prices.

Polaroid sold many variations on this basic design; here a Model 104

Considering their ubiquity and low value, there’s no need to feel guilty about cannibalizing one for other purposes. Other possible lens-shutter combinations can be adapted to replace Polaroid’s original; all that’s needed is an image circle covering the 120mm print diagonal (or just close to it, if you enjoy some vignetting). People have even adapted Holga and Diana lens/shutter assemblies to work!

But to me, the main reason to make such a conversion is to gain full manual exposure control with true f/stop and shutter-speed settings; and perhaps to use a focal length never available from Polaroid’s own offerings.

In my stash of random optics, I had a nice 1961 Schneider Angulon lens in a Compur shutter (scored cheaply at an estate sale once). Its 90mm focal length would yield intriguing semi-wide coverage on the packfilm format (about equivalent to a 32mm lens on 135 film).

The Angulon’s f/6.8 maximum aperture doesn’t sound too exciting; but this still is an improvement on Polaroid’s typical f/8.8 lens. A bit of research told me that the 90mm Angulon formula (not “Super”) covers 4×5″ film—so on the smaller Polaroid format, there was even room for some shifts and swings if I wanted them!

Thus I resolved to build a home-hacked “field camera” based on an unused Polaroid model 420 I had been given. (Thanks Ralph!)

I won’t repeat the excellent disassembly photos on this Italian blog, which apply to most accordion-style Polaroid models. But my first step was to remove the whole lens and shutter assembly. Because of the different focal length of my new lens, the original viewfinder and rangefinder became useless too, so I removed those as well.

The original lens on these cameras has a focal length of 114mm. To focus at infinity with a 90mm lens, I would not be able to extend the old lensboard and struts to their original locked position. So after a bit of hacking I extracted most of the strut parts too.

The front rim of the bellows includes a metal piece, whose opening needed to be carefully enlarged to accommodate the diameter of the Schneider lens.

This camera was definitely a quick experiment. So to keep construction simple, I didn’t attempt to engineer any fancy collapsing lens mechanism myself. Instead my scheme was just to hot-glue a slab of plywood to the bottom of the camera; then mount the lens on a sliding standard made from a stiff ‘L’ of scrap aluminum. This does mean that the completed camera is a bit of an armful to carry around, though!

The height of the lens hole aligns with the center of the bellows; there is is a smaller hole at its perimeter, for a peg on the shutter which keeps the lens from spinning. I slotted the bottom of the standard so that when the camera was in the vertical orientation (e.g. shooting a building) I could shift the lens upwards for perspective control.

As turns out, I was too conservative with my +/- 23mm of shift: The lens has enough coverage that I should have gone for more. I made it possible to pivot the aluminum standard, too, hoping this would be useful for focus control; but in my experience, the effect of this is pretty subtle, given the generous depth of field of the Angulon and the small print size. But if you were using a longer, faster lens, it might be useful.

The aluminum lens standard is simply glued to the front of the bellows with a generous bead of black silicone sealant (sold as auto gasket material). I used clothespins to hold those parts together until the silicone cured (with my nice lens removed, of course!).

The plywood is slotted for focus travel, with a wingnut on the bolt allowing fingertip loosening and tightening. The bottom of the plywood also includes my favorite homebrew “tripod socket”: A 1/4″-20 nut epoxied into a shallow hole.

The next step was to calibrate the focusing scale for different distances. To do this, I cannibalized an empty film pack and made a ground-glass back with it. The frosted surface is just sandpapered plexiglass; this needs to be glued tight inside the plastic front of the film pack, frosted side forward, to be in the correct film plane. (The metal pack parts are discarded.)

With that held into the camera and the back swung open, I measured off known subject distances and then used a magnifier to find the best points of focus on the groundglass. It turns out that the amount of lens movement needed to focus from infinity to 4 feet is surprisingly small. But conveniently, the extra bellows extension available permits focusing down to 2 feet or closer. (You can see where I’ve added marker lines on the plywood, corresponding to several measured subject distances.)

Unfortunately a Polaroid film pack doesn’t have a dark slide; so you can only use the groundglass to set up the camera, not as a focus aid for each shot. Fortunately focus turns out to be fairly non-critical even wide open at f/6.8. Guessing at the subject distance has turned out to be an entirely adequate method of focusing this beast.

There were a few finishing touches to the camera: I screwed a metal accessory shoe into the plastic body, salvaged from another camera carcass; it’s used for an auxiliary viewfinder approximating the correct semi-wide lens coverage. (No, that is not a VIOOH, you Leica geeks; just a cheap Japanese copy.) That finder actually has the wrong aspect ratio and inaccurate parallax compensation—but hey it’s better than nothing.

I also added a nice lens shade via a Series VI adapter; and trimmed the corners of the plywood so they’d be less likely to snag in the oversized beach bag I use to lug this camera around.

I must confess that the “tilt-shift” aspect of this project did not turn out to be as useful as I’d hoped. So it’s a bit hard to justify the bulk of the completed camera. Yet it’s a delight to be able to use an honest-to-god handheld light meter and conventional exposure settings with Polaroid materials. Here’s a sample from my trial of Fujifilm’s FP-100C packfilm. (It seems Fuji comes through with the greens again!)

I’ve nicknamed my Frankenstein creation “the Anguloid.” If you’re interested in more samples, check out my photos on Flickr tagged with that.