All Paper Camera

Project Stats
Pattern:Wrebbit Built Art All Paper Camera  Started:12/25/2002 
Other Materials: white glue, craft knife, needles, brushes, weight  Completed:12/31/2002 
Also Used: clamps, pennies, black paint (to fill any tiny holes)     

This is the Wrebbit "Built Art" All Paper Camera Kit. How cool is this? It actually works when you're done building it. Of course, I don't think the original bellows camera took 35mm film, but I'm not arguing. I think they're cheating by saying it's all made of paper, though, since the bellows themselves are covered in fabric.

The box:


The necessary (and not provided) tools: glue, a craft knife, a small brush, and a protective work surface. I'm going to need needles to poke holes, too, but I'm certain I can find one or two of those somewhere in my craft room!



Here's the first part of the casing, about half-way through. You can see the giant book I'm using as a weight on the table behind it.
This neat-looking item is the film advance sprocket. 9 clicks per frame of film...in theory, anyway.



At this point, the skeleton of the casing is entirely finished, and the film advance and rewind mechanism are completed. The film goes in the top, threads down into a slit in the bottom spool, where it gets taken up. When the roll is finished, the button on the left (ok, the button isn't there yet, but imagine it, please) gets pushed in, releasing the sprocket, and the top right button is turned until the film is rewound.
The inner lens is completed, with the film guide that keeps the film flat across the lens opening.



The inner lens, looking from the front.
Here's the final light-tight casing, with the support for the front lens being glued in place. At this point, besides glue, the non-paper items in this camera are:
two small wooden dowels
two small springs
168 pennies - these provide some weight for stability.




The paper insides of the bellows, all stretched out on the floor. Pretty soon, these will be covered with fabric glue, and then covered in fabric. I think that the camera is essentially light-tight without the fabric, but it will certainly make it look better!
All done! Now I just have to wait for a sunny day (in Rochester, that might be a while from now) to go test it out. I'm going to build a platform that will screw into my tripod for it, and I'll have to find some sort of waterproof case to carry it in.



The last bit of non-paper goodness in the camera - a tiny piece of aluminum foil in it, with an even tinier hole poked right in the middle. (So tiny, in fact, that I couldn't get a good picture of it!)