In my previous post, I shared how I converted my Afghan Box Camera into a slide projector. The principle of the slide projector involves putting a light source at the back whose light passes through some condenser lens. The light then goes through the slide and finally pass the projector lens and be projected big on the the projector screen.

I thought that would be about the same principle as a photo enlarger in the dark room. In the enlarger we have also the light pass through some condenser lens (depending on the design) and it will pass through the negative, go through the lens and it will be projected big on the photo paper so I thought maybe I would try to use my Afghan Box Camera again to convert it into photo enlarger  in this case it will be horizontal enlarger where I will project the image horizontally onto the wall surface.

Negative Carrier

I decided to use my photo paper holder inside the Afghan Box Camera for this conversion. I taped up a 6x7cm window using some black PVC tape. If this is to be a more permanent setup, I would make a proper negative carrier for now. For now, this will do and I used some small pieces of masking tape to secure the 6×7 negative flat against the glass. To focus I would move the focusing rods per the usual way when using the Afghan Box Camera which move the negative towards or away from the lens.

Light Source

Unlike a light source for a slide projector, the enlargement is smaller so light source for this enlarger can be relatively less powerful. So I use a simple 11W warm color LED bulb. As I do not have a timer, I simply use the on/off switch for the bulb during printing to control the exposure time.

Lens

I do not have a dedicated enlarger lens so I use my trusty Fujinon 210mm lens as the enlarging lens. For a safe filter, I dug out an old Cokin red filter and a Cokin filter holder. I would just slip the filter and holder over the lens if I need to block the light from reaching the photo paper.

Paper

I use the Arista Edu 5×7 inches Resin Coated paper. Being a variable contrast paper, I could use the Ilford Multigrade Contrast filters to control the contrast of the print. Again, this is done simply by taping the filter on the rear element of the lens during printing.

Results

The results shown that the box camera can be easily turned into a photo enlarger by making a few changes to it

• Add in a light source
• Replace/convert the photo paper holder with/into a negative holder
• Add in safelight filter and contrast filter

Improvements

Nevertheless,  a few improvements can be made

• Better way of holding the paper on the wall instead of just using masking tape.
• Some method to confirm the squareness of the enlarger to the photo paper
• Better way to hold the safe filter and contrast filters

Conclusion

Horizontal enlargers have been around for a long while and box camera users can consider turning their box camera int0 an photo enlarger if they need a quick print from a negative.

Remember my previous post where I turned my Afghan Box Camera into a 4×5 slide projector? Today I have another idea around the Afghan Box Camera – that is to make use of my humble mobile phone camera to create a large format look by making use of the box camera and its lens.

This is much inspired by other fellow photographers who have designed similar stuff such as this by
Olexiy Shportun and another by Tim Hamilton. The main idea behind this is to make use of a digital camera to take a photo of the projected image made by the large format lens.

Design

In my design, I decided to make use of a mobile phone camera rather than a DSLR or mirrorless camera. However how would I control the mobile phone camera if the phone is placed inside the box? Luckily there are various apps that will help us.

Remote Control

For my Android phone, I decided to go for the IP Webcam app for its versatile. It is free, can be used via Wi-Fi and easy to use. Hence by using this app, the mobile phone camera can be controlled and hence trigger off remotely.

After some testing, I realised that the phone camera cannot be too near the ground glass otherwise the phone camera will produce an image with a hot spot. The best position I found is to place the phone all the way to the back of the box camera. The ground glass image will only occupied about half of the camera phone photo framesize. This can be easily overcome via zooming in via the control interface or cropping during post processing.

The IP Webcam control interface is easy to use, I usually play with the following settings

1. Zoom – to zoom on the ground glass image as mentioned above
2. Exposure compensation – this settings can be adjusted from -12 to 12 steps (not sure how 1 step is equivalent to a photographic stop)
3. Effects – like any phone digital camera filter , you can set it to Black & white, sepia , negative. My favorite is black & white simply to minic the usually monochrome photo we take with black & white photographic paper.
4. White balance – for shooting in color, Daylight settings seems to boost up the colors saturation quite a bit.

Some Sample Photos

In conclusion, this method of hybrid shooting has potential to be explored further. My best use of such way of shooting was in an educational workshop during this pandemic time where safe distancing is encouraged so to be able to show what is happening on the ground glass remotely is particular useful.

For wet plate collodion process, the plate has to be developed before the collodion get dries up. Therefore an wet plate collodion darkbox is essential for outdoor shooting. There are many designs for a darkbox that can be found  online but  I opted for a briefcase design as you can see in the video below.

The dimensions of my darkbox when closed are 29″ x 22 ”  x 5.5″ making it a very compact size. It is constructed out of plywood and hardwood pieces without any fanciful woodworking joints. The wood pieces are simply joined together using screws.

Let me know if you have any questions.