Thursday, May 12, 2011

Making of the camera
a chinese speaking adventure

One step is to design a pinhole camera on paper, the other is to find the materials, craftsmen and workshops to produce this more-than-2-meter tall camera in an only chinese speeking environment.

Metal structure


















For the structure, I found a small welder's shop below a giant highway at Xujing which could do the works in high quality stainless steel. Due to the weather conditions and the mainly poor steel quality, I decided to invert some extra money in that material and to avoid endless corrosion problems of current local steel.
The friendly welder did understand all my special wishes out of my drawings and after some weired chinese conversation after only sev eral weeks of chinese lessons. I went severel times to check price, in-between steps and the final assembly.
welder's shop

















The tent
The tent cover was another issue. There was no fabric available which was similar to my spanish sample, but I did find at Caoan Fabric Market some waterproof black-out fabric with a silver and a black face.
The fabric is relatively thin, so I asked for a double layer cover to avoid future problems.






I presented the complicated velcro system via a Tetra-Brik scale model - my real structure is far to big- and finally the cover fits perfectly to the structure. Mrs. Huang made some final stiches on the velcro.











My local carpinter cut the wooden bottom, top and pinhole frame panels, so the tent soon can be finished with some paint and screws.