E04b The Aperture

Homemade Camera Podcast

This is the second half of a two-part episode. In this half, we talk about the aperture.

Nick and Graham start off talking about the purpose of an aperture on a camera and the collimation of light that is required for a sharp image. Graham floats the crackpot concept of using variously-sized holes in lens caps as aperture controls (10:22). Nick then talks about the optical test-bench he wants to create (14:18).

Returning to the real world from their flights of fancy, they discuss the issues with apertures that get too small and the issues with the wave portion of the particle-wave behavior of light (15:48).

The effects of various numbers of blades in a given aperture are discussed in relation to the holiday movies that make their appearance on The Hallmark Channel (17:47).

Nick describes a lens that uses rotating shutters, rotating apertures, and rotating neutral density filters in a single barrel (29:00).

They discuss what type of aperture each would work with on a quick and simple build (34:32).

Nick talks about a camera he is in the process of designing that uses a dead Fujifilm GX680 body (36:42).

Nick talks about his experience with the Sixty3 plastic panoramic camera that Graham designed and built (49:50) though it takes Nick a bit of time to realize what Graham is hinting at. Graham also discusses another build, the Sixty7 pinhole camera (53:50) made with a Graflok 6X7 back.

Nick laments the lack of email interaction with our listeners (1:02:45) but talks about the cameras Dora Goodman has built (https://www.instagram.com/doragoodman/?hl=en, https://www.doragoodman.com/) and made available for 3D printing.