Petting Zoo: 11" x 14" Monorail

 

Our hardware store stocks "bonfire matches" that get used every homecoming season for taking part in the high school's Bonfire. One of these split 2x4s is the basis for the focusing mechanism for this camera.

Red oak door thresholds are the dimensioned wood for this project. One strip provided the material for the three sliders on the monorail. The middle one has just a tripod socket, with a tightener on top to secure it to the monorail. The front and rear sliders tighted from below so that the standards can be secured on top.

The front standard features shift via a left/right slider block. To this is attached the front yoke with a single hand-tightened thread that allows horizontal swing. The yoke itself is a narrow section of red oak door threshold screwed to the ends of the shift bar. Slits on the sides allow rise and fall lens movement as well as vertical swing. A 6" square opening for lens boards ensures that I can adapt all my large lenses to fit.

The rear standard provides only one movement, a mid-height swing. Since the camera body can end up swung between the yoke sides, only the top is accessible for the ground glass adapter and plate holders. So these are of full 14" square dimension, and I use internal adapters to center plates of any size for imaging.

Note that the pivot point for the rear tilt is about 1/3 up from the bottom of the case. The least focus change occurs closest to the pivot, so for portraits that are spread focused in that facial/eye zone, tilts can be evaluated while keeping the key focus relatively unchanged, but be mindful of foreground scale tending to loom.

The tapered bellows uses a heritage fold developed by Francis Fowke in 1856. The inner material is blackout cloth from Thor Labs. I can no longer find a source for the pebbled hide outer covering. 

The camera focuses solely by movement of front or rear standards. A thumbscrew under each slider secures the focus.

This was one of my favorite construction projects. Despite its size, it handles with ease. The only awkwardness is due to the necessary excess of monorail that extends from the camera.