if you are looking for something to do make a camera instead of using a store bought one. you can purchase reuse and recombine other camera parts or cobble together your own from anything you can find.
use waxed paper for your ground glass if you make something you might want to focus, or if you make a fixed lens and need to determine the focus point.
you don’t even need photo chemistry or develop out the images, you preserve them digitally.
Determine the focus point with the waxed paper
Replace the waxed paper with a sheet of photo paper.
You can do this in regular light if it’s paper, no it’s not true it won’t turn black immediately or grey immediately, paper is not like that.
after you tape and dangle the paper (or put in something more rigid ) just leave the camera. as the TV Salesman used to say “set it and forget it” … for how long you might ask? it can take as little as 6 minutes, I’ve done it for 36 hours before. …so find something that’s glued to the ground or your paper just collect light.
these sorts of prints make images of things that have heavy, have mass, they are immobile.
you can leave your cameras unblinking eye for as long as you want and it will keep collecting a light impression of what was focused on the paper / waxed paper.
when you’re done or you think you’ve waited enough remove the paper and rephotograph it with your phone,.
if you want to try to preserve the image, soak it in a baking soda or washing soda solution so you can put it in some weak developer ( like caffenol rich in washing soda) and then you can attempt to fix the print in a light dip in fixer. this might work if you’re lucky, or it might just slow down the degradation process. it could take years for your print to fade in dim light or in a box. I’ve photograms I made like this using liquid light liquid emulsion, and they look like they were just made.
once you photograph your image you can invert it and make a positive print.
I call these images retina prints because they echo a little bit of what Nicéphore Niépce was doing in the early 1800s. his images were made with salted paper or asphalt and white gas, and the image you made with your home made camera are just silver prints.
