I love fiddly, crafty things and I love photography, so how could I possibly resist Lomography’s latest gimmick, the Konstruktor? It involves building your own SLR! I bought the Konstruktor do-it-yourself kit this summer, and it turned out to be the perfect thing for those lazy summer days when I was recovering from otitis.
After I’ve built it and shot a roll with it, I can certainly say I’m happy I got it, but there’s no hiding the fact that the camera isn’t quite as easy to build and not quite as good as Lomography says.
The first and more or less the easiest thing you do is to assemble the lens.
Then comes the hood viewfinder that goes on top of the camera. The little lens is supposed to make it easier to focus on close-up subjects, but I can’t really say it has been of much use so far.
When you get to the camera body, it becomes a little more difficult. These are all the gears that wind the film. They were fiddly! I am not sure I managed to put them together correctly; I am now halfway through my second roll of film in this camera, and the winding mechanism seems to have stuck.
Here I’m putting together the finished parts of the camera body, with the mirror house in the middle. I was disappointed that the mirror house came pre-assembled – it is the most interesting piece of an SLR after all. But I suppose the mirror house is too difficult to assemble properly, and that Lomography wanted to avoid the complaints that would come when people – myself included, I’m sure – failed to do it correctly and perhaps broke something. There is a description of the mirror house and its parts and assembly in the manual, but reading about it is not the same as seeing and assembling the pieces yourself.
The finished product – it actually looks like a camera!
But I didn’t do all this work just for a camera – the purpose was equally to get something I could actually use. Some of the images from my first roll turned out very nice indeed.
Even though I took care to assemble the body as tightly as possible, there are light leaks. I like light leaks. At least sometimes.
Like the Lomography Fisheye or the Diana Mini, this is a summer camera; with an f/10 lens and a shutter spead of 1/80 it requires a LOT of light – or a very high ISO.
In sum – thumbs up for the idea to build your own camera, but it does detract from the whole that the resulting camera is more of a toy camera than a proper SLR.
~ All the best from Jenny.
Jenny, this is brilliant! You made your own camera. And it works, light leaks and all. Yay!!!
so fun! what a brave experiment.
Hmmm, this looks like all sorts of fun. It would be a great activity for a photography class!
Thanks for sharing your experience.
Hi!
I built one too and wanted to do a little google research on some problems I have had. Turns out a number of people have the same problem of the film jamming. I decided to take the camera apart and give everything a good looking over. Instead of trying to make everything work, I just wanted to make the film advance work properly. And I succeeded!
What I did was uncouple the film counter from the film advance mechanism. How? I just removed the smallest gear that is in the third photo. I have put in a new roll of film and even though I am only a small number of shots in, I can tell you the film advance is ALOT better. I will try to return with final thoughts later! 🙂
Dirk
Oh, brilliant – thanks a lot for the advice!! I’ll have to try that 🙂
Hi Dirk, I was having problems with my film advancing and I took your advice. The camera works a lot smoother but I was now wondering how do you know when to stop advancing and taking the photo? The film advances with no problem I just don’t know when to stop.
Hmmm, when I took out the one small gear it did not disable the ability for the film to got the right stops when advancing. I will take a look at mine later tomorrow and report back. I have not used it recently, but I have been inspired to do so again when I came across some of the photos I took with it when I first tried it out.
~Dirk
Hi Kristen,
I find that mine works fine with film in it. But if there is no film in the camera, turning the winder will not stop the advance. If you turn the gear with sprockets bellow the film gate, the advance does not stop. If you turn both together, it works fine.
You might need to assemble the camera and line up the gears perfectly. In the instructions they mention having to have them lined up “Just so.” I think they need to emphasize this a little more. And here is a link to one of the above photos with an arrow added to point out which gear I removed. I did put the screw that holds it down back in just so I do not lose it.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/superiordirk/14635828154/
I haven’t had the camera apart for quite a long time. Let me know if this helps.
Dirk
Hello again!
The little mod I did works great. It winds so much more easily now. And here are some photos from the camera.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/superiordirk/sets/72157637865296975/
Nothing fancy. I slightly Photoshopped three of the images but the rest I just tossed into the flickr set.
ps, I do not use flickr that often.
Cool to hear that your mod works – thanks for letting us know!
Thanks for the posts so far.
The Lomography site video, is rubbish, as is the instruction book.
As you say, the lightbox is pre assembled.
In the book, it says peel the protective tape off before installing.
How do you do that, from inside the assembled lightbox ? I have tried with tweezers, but they slip off, because the tape is so sticky
how did you get tyhe blue tape, off the mirror ?
Any help will be greatly appreciated
Jan