Cary and the DIY 8×10
Tuesday September 18th, 2012
by Maria Luci
Many of you may remember the Legotron. Who could forget it, really? It was a masterpiece in plastic block—a fully functioning 4×5 camera made of LEGO bricks by photographer Cary Norton. Cary’s been at it again, but this time, he left the LEGOs in their boxes and graduated to the next level of home-made cameradom: a do-it-youself 8×10 made for $15 (minus the lens) out of foamcore.
Creating the Legotron and actually getting to use it on assignments—including a recent Civil War shoot for The New York Times—started Cary’s love for building things. The response to the Legotron was “overwhelming,” garnering Cary much attention across the blogosphere. He knew immediately that he wanted to continue his DIY journey, but it wasn’t until recently revisiting the work of a large-format film photographer he admired, Benjamin Goss, that Cary decided to dive into his next project and create an 8×10 camera using an old Goerz Celor 10 3/4″ lens. The ethereal quality of Benjamin’s photographs inspired Cary, with one portrait in particular lodging itself in his mind. With this and other 8×10 shots in mind, Cary got to work hoping to create a few memorable photographs himself.
Of the project Cary says,
This camera was built to test the lens I’d recently acquired. I have long terms goals of building a nicer camera out of proper materials—which will be its own experience, as I’ve never really done a project like that—but I was too impatient to wait for the longer process. I really wanted to know that the lens worked, so I grabbed some foam core from my local art store. That said, I will probably keep using this camera for fun. I shot some personal work on it and used it on a shoot for the album art for a musician. I did a couple of really long exposure paper negative shots, which I hadn’t done since my oatmeal-container-pinhole camera I made in 5th grade, so I have no idea what that stuff is going to look like. It could be horrible or super interesting—and that’s really exciting to me.
1/15 exposure @ wide open
The camera is mostly made up of the lens and foamcore as well as some gaffers tapes and plexiglass. His initial plans were laid during a morning breakfast and the camera was completed by dinner. And even though Cary didn’t spend much time on the design or construction of the camera, as it was just supposed to be a test, it’s so far worked surprisingly well. Cary’s enjoying seeing the photos that come from the camera, adding,
The response so far has been good. I’m hoping that people see it and realize that 8×10 is not as intimidating as it seems. When I started shooting 4×5 I was certainly intimidated, if by nothing else than the size. Same thing with 8×10. Just loading it took some mental adjustment coming from 4×5. But building this thing on a whim took some of the scariness out of it. I hope someone else gets a wild hair and makes something too (anything!) and has fun with it.
8 second exposure @ ƒ 64
Cary hopes his next project will be building a more sophisticated 8×10 camera, but at the moment is working on restoring an old Calument C1 Green Monster 8×10 field camera. He concludes that “making stuff is half the fun. Kind of hard to stop now.”
View more of Cary’s work at carynorton.com and read about how he made the 8×10 camera here.
