right this should be the final cast. been working on the shape and i think this is it.

quick rough out in foam. its quite hard to get the concave curve on the grip.

did it in wood instead. easier to be accurate especially with the state of our studio hot wire.

coming along nicely. the concave curves are easy with a sharp carving gauge. the parallell lines will the lost in the saw draft and gained with the plastic chassis.

glued on the raised mount area and cut it in half seems so counter intuitive to run it through the saw.

vac formed it to get nice mini fillets on the edges and to give the plaster mould a nice surface.

a map of imaging.

arts and crafts session. getting people to fill in blank blocks of wood as cameras.

had real trouble getting decent casts from the plaster moulds this time. managed to get a pair a bit better than these.

workshop is shut for two weeks so its back it time we go.

sand stone and sandpaper to get the faces flat. this works really well.

still some work to be done. the grey camera is made from epoxy putty. i wanted to see what it would be like and possible have it in stock as a backup.

got two good faces. decided to pin it together.

thats basically as far as im going to go with this one. its covered in inclusions and all sorts. also i bought a micro four thirds lens and it looks to big on the camera so im going to enlarge it slightly and try casting it in silicone.

starting again. a bit bigger this time and i got some silicone.

vacformed in ps.

that silicone is messy stuff. almost ran out so had to pack out the corners.

disaster. it came out worse then it had in the plaster moulds.

spent all day and about twenty casts before i found out about talc in the mould. this is a quick test and it works.

got the front cast at home over the weekend.

after some sanding and cutting out the hole for the lens mount.

so i gave at a bit more polishing and some details.

heres a close up of the shutter speed dial. as im taking the picture with my left hand you can see how the camera is supported in my right even with the thumb free to move the wheel.

new lens. as part of an effort to highlight the physical control interface as the most important part of my design i have stripped off the canon logo and replaced the lens with a rapid prototyped pancake. still waiting for the knobs and dials to arrive so these are carved fron a pencil rubber and painted.

if anyone is still interested in my attempts to make a wide angle lens i finally cracked it. it is a standard 50mm lens with a really strong fisheye element held about 40mm infront and a much flatter element at the rear.

this is a selection of my prototypes stuck to the wall for my degree show