Building Large Format Camera Bellows

We have finally started work on the bellows for the large format camera build, there has been a slight delay as we have moved to new facilities which has a new state of the art continuous lighting studio fitted out with a hi-glide system and new Profoto continuous lights which we will do a post on latter.

Back to the bellows build, this is the most difficult part of the camera build so far due to the size and complexity of the bellows.

The construction of the bellows is based on J.B Harlin excellent PDF on how to build your own camera bellows at http://www.jbhphoto.com/articles/bellows/bbuild.htm

The first stage of the bellows construction is to build a former to shape and support the bellows. The former is about 230cm long and 74cm at the widest point and is supported in a cradle to allow the former to be rotated.

The ribs for the bellows were drawn up in Adobe Illustrator and printed onto a thin stiff card on a Epson large format printer. The 408 ribs for the bellows are being hand cut, if we have to build another set of bellows they will be done on the School's laser cutter.

Normally the ribs are attached to three sides of the bellows before fitting them around the former but due to the size of the bellows the fabric is being fitted around the former first and then the ribs glued in situ.

The fabric for the bellows is Heritage Library Buckram book cloth from Ratchford and is strong, light and with two layers will have no light bleed http://www.ratchford.co.uk. The bellows laid out flat are 3.4 x 2.4 meters and using the bellows template the fabric was cut to the desired shape before being fitted around the former face in and glued together with contact adhesive.

At the moment the 408 ribs are being glued to the fabric and in the next blog we will remove the bellows from the former and pull them inside out and fold the bellows to shape and attach them to the camera.