I sometimes get an email from someone who sees that I use a box camera to do a lot of my photography, and they ask me how to use a box camera they might find in a junk store or they found in the back of a closet at their grandparents’ house.
There really isn’t a right way or wrong way to use a box camera, it’s kind of like your cellphone but fewer controls. It’s basically the same thing as a point and shoot Holga or Lomo camera.
The first thing to remember is a box camera usually has 1 Fstop, and 1 shutter speed. The lens is usually something plastic or glass. The lens used in a box camera is probably a single cell meniscus, maybe curved on one side and flat on the other called a Plano (flat ) convex (curved) lens, most of the time the curved part is facing the film. sometimes it’s not, and people “flip” the lens. This design is also sometimes called a “Wollaston Meniscus lens”. If it isn’t “stopped down” (usually to F10-ish) it will be pretty soft with a shallow depth of field , stopped down it is sharper. The shutter speed on a box camera is somewhere around 1/50thS, so it is fast enough to stop action but slow enough that it doesn’t stop everything (like dragging your shutter). If you have a shutter speed tester you can figure out exactly what the speed is, but I’ve found it to be kind of over kill. There is usually a BULB or TIME function on these cameras too. It is usually just a switch that is flipped or pulled out and it will keep the shutter open until you decide to close it. Some box cameras have a few Fstops, and even a lens filter.
If you are lucky you might find a box camera with a viewer you look through that is clean and works, but it’s usually a mirror and milk (ground) glass. I use a few things with this sort of viewer, none of them work, the mirrors are tarnished or the milk glass I’ll just say beyond it’s useful life. I have an idea what my field of view is so I just point and shoot, after 25 years I get close. If you find a camera that has no viewer you can put a sheet of waxed paper on your “film gate” ( the inside of the box that the film is against when you make your photograph ). The waxed paper will work like “ground glass” so if you put the camera on Bulb or Time and you can see what the camera sees. It is usually a wide view, but not ultra wide view. You can also see where the focus “sweet spot” is. These fixed focus cameras were made for snapshots / scrap book / photo albums, I’ve come to the conclusion that maybe around 7-10 feet is around the focus. The waxed paper will come in handy for something else I will mention in a moment.
If you shoot film in a box camera, use the highest ISO possible since the shutter speed and aperture are like they are. The negatives might be a little dense but after a roll or two you will be able to judge the light better and you will get the hang of it. if you are printing the images yourself remember a lot of these prints were drug store prints and not enlargements ( that is why they are big negatives ) so don’t be afraid to get a dense negative and make contact prints. Box cameras came in all shapes and sizes. so if you want a bigger print just use a bigger camera.
You might have bought a bigger camera and taken the front of the camera off to clean out the 100 year old dust bunnies from the shutter and if your lens was rattling around removed your lens to fix or clean it but then you realize you might not have put it in right so the focus is off. If you put waxed paper in the back you can change your focus to be what you want. If you want to use it specifically for portraits or for landscapes or close ups you can adjust the focus to be specific.
If you don’t want to use film but you want to shoot paper instead of film you have a few options. There is a company called Film Washi that makes spools of photo paper to put in your camera. It might be available at your local online retailer. You can also spool your own paper onto your film spools, be advised, it might put too much tension on your winder and cause trouble. I’ve spooled paper on 122 spools (122 format was for post card format negatives (5.5×3.75″) it worked OK but it was a big graflex camera, not a small box camera whose bodies are sometimes made of cardboard and winding mechanisms less robust. If you coat your own using liquid emulsion if you use thin paper you won’t have as much trouble with the winding mechanism. Another option is something called a “falling plate camera”.
The falling plate camera was designed after the invention of dry plates ( that’s the plate in the name ). These cameras were sometimes complicated with variable speed shutters, and sometimes they were just a basic 1 speed and Time box camera. The inside of the camera has “septi”, and a spring and a release. The glass plate was inserted in each septum and stacked upright and the spring put pressure on the plates so after the photograph was made, the plate was released and fell to the floor of the camera, horizontal beneath the lens (that’s the falling in the name). If you find one of these cameras just put a piece of black single ply mat board in each septum, and cut down your photo paper and just put it on top of the mat board. You can also use modern dry plates that you coat yourself with liquid emulsions or get them pre-made from Jason Lane or Zebra. They will probably cut down the glass for you if you have a falling plate camera that isnt’ a regular size ( they were made from 3×4 to long / wide).
Photo paper is very slow compared to fast dry plates from the early 1900s, so you will have to figure out what ISO to use for the way you work. Photo paper (and dry plates) are not reactive to all light like panchromatic film. It is reactive to blue light and depending on the kind of light you are photographing in can either have a long tonal range or have runaway contrast. I usually photograph on overcast days or open shade.
When you develop your paper negative you have a lot of different options. Some photographers love using film developer like HC110, because it is less active than paper developers ( less active, less contrast). For a long time I used a 2 bath system, one used tray of print developer ( I used a lot of Ansco 130 and later when Glycin was out of my budget, plain old D72 ) and a fresh batch. I’d put it in the fresh developer first and when the image first appeared, I’d go into the stale developer if it was too “contrasty”. Later I began using this technique with caffenol development going between paper developer (normal dilution ) and caffenol C spiked with a dash of stock paper developer. I’d go back and forth between the developers until the paper was developed to completion ( 2 min fiber, 1 min rc ). These days I just use 1:9 sprint paper developer, it works great.
The next question I’m asked is what do you do with your paper negatives after you have a negative? you’ve got a few different options for that as well.
You can put the negative on top of a sheet of photo paper under a sheet of glass and make a contact print ( like you might do with a (film) contact sheet ). You can put the negative in your enlarger and print through the paper. (In both these cases it might take a while for the light to pass through the paper). You might make a “reflective enlarger” where bright lights project illuminating the paper which is then projected through a lens like a traditional enlarger. If you happen to have a very bright bulb you can bypass using an enlarger for your contact prints and use that. I make prints with silver chloride paper and have a 300R bulb (300 watts is pretty bright) so it takes less time. The last method is to photograph the paper negative to make a “hybrid” print ( traditional negative + digital working together ). I am currently using digital negatives of paper negatives that I contact print the old fashioned way. The digital negative are made with a cellphone, and allows me to retouch the negative and make a clean digital negative with the right contrast curve to print on either store bought photo paper, or an alternative process (including home made emulsion ). Im using both overhead transparency film, and cheep paper put through my 80$ laser printer and it works well.
Then there is the Afghan Camera …
It is a box camera with a big enough box to have small trays of developer and fixer. After the image is developed and washed, it is rephotographed and made into a positive.
