Right, I’m sorry for the delay, I’ve been meaning to type this up for what feels like decades – but since November at least.
If you’re anything like me you will hate great wordy blogs etc so ill try keep this brief and more image/video based ..
The idea to build my own selfie cam was inspired in a couple of ways.
I had been using Rightbooth for work and was relatively familiar with how versatile it could be.
I had booked a company/guy to bring a photo booth to my upcoming wedding, but he would be leaving at 10:00pm and would be taking the kit with him ..
(which is kind of about the time we figured people would be getting drunk and taking the best pictures!!
… so, i figured if i nailed one together then it could just stay there all night ..
well that would have been a great plan … but i, in my infinite, and typical total lack of wisdom , decided, 2 months before my own wedding (not the most time rich moment of my life) to build it as a GIANT camera.
i looked at a few ideas for the design – including one with bellows etc .. but opted for i felt would be a ‘simple’ box type construction .
I started off by making a mirrored lens from a washing machine door. It had the right sort of size and shape and I thought, rather naively, that I could just take photos through it and it would serve as a nice one way mirror .. but it was no where near ‘clear’ enough as a poorly moulded plastic and lost so much resolution that i had to come up with something else.
i really did NOT plan this well .
interestingly . . . the choice in actuator was good and bad in equal measure .. and was quite possibly a false economy due to the sheer amount of time and stress that was involved in getting it to work reliably .
the actuator was , frankly, phenomenal, … in the actuator section, ill go into just how much force that little box was able to exert.
i know a lot of you will be horrified by the build ‘quality’ of this thing and my only excuse was that i had, even though being in possession of access to a large workshop, decided to keep and build this thing at home, which relied heavily on the great British weather being kind . . . which it wasn’t.