here are three shots of a foam prototype. it has some features that im pretty sure i want to include in the final piece.

here you can see the viewfinder and how it intersects with the body rather than being fully embedded in it. this is to provide a visual indication of the cameras direction when shooting from the hip. the coloured bit it a switch for white balance. it has three position. daylight in the middle with a blue and orange filter either side.

here is a view through the lens. i think a proper optical viewfinder is best but it means you have to keep the taking the camera away from your eye to set the focus and aperture. what i have done is used a fisheye viewfinder  to enable the user to see the lens settings in the bottom of the viewfinder.

here you can see the thumbwheel. i have shaped the camera son it can be held securely in one hand and without the thumb. i think this is a good way of controlling the shutter speed. i thought perhaps a small window on top of the camera and shutter speeds printed on top of the wheel.

foam model ready to be dipped in paint.  white model white paint but it should improve the texture and stop the polystyrene flaking all over the place.

another foam model. here you can see the raised viewfinder and angled cutaway for the shutter release. the near bottom corner is rounded to make using the lens easier.

the two models after a couple of dips in the paint. its quite a nice texture to hold.

some card shoe inserts i saw outside a shop on the way to college. going to try moulding a camera from it.

got some marker on it.

same one again. the join line around the camera is so heavy because i intend to have the internal chassis show through where the two halves of the camera meet.

soaking some of the shoe card in water. in the left are two halves of a foam camera to mould it onto.

went alright. ill see on monday when its dry. hard to work it without it just falling apart.

shot of the back of the camera. on the right is the thumbwheel for shutter speed. in the middle is a slide for iso. havent fully worked this out yet but if iso is just ramping up the gain the could that be controlled by a slide potentiometer? next is the white balance. daylight in the middle and one filter each side.

this is the guts of the working prototype. hooked up as a webcam to set the flange distance.

shutter in red and power in black.

one option is to encase it in foam like this. feels nice because its a bit squishy.

in the end this is what i went with. i intent to give this to someone to test out. the black box and red button are clearly off the shelf items and so dont provoke any discussion about form. this should focus any dialogue on the function which is the focus of the prototype.

just enough space to fit the small floating pcb and the switches.

what an utter mess. im not great at soldering and this is very fiddly. this is so i can use my own switches for power and shutter move the mode dial to a part of the box with more space.

all in. what a faff. couple of late ones in the studio but it does take photos.

first set of pictures taken with the camera in the project.

lights taken from the bus. dont know if the pulse effect is from the light of the camera.

my face. this is not as bad as it looks. it was taken on a night bus the only light os the reading light from the people across the aisle. so its a terrible photo but hard conditions for any camera.

dodgy shot of the studio. not good but it does show that the field of view is much improved over earlier versions.

reubens daffodils.

here are a few shots from skipcam

heres a few days work in a collage.

starting with foam and then to plaster. wooden insert suspended in mould. cast in pewter. finished on belt sanders and polishing wheel. sheet of acrylic sandwiched in between. both pieces are screwed to this sheet. the acrylic is to represent the plastic chassis i intend to screw the final shells onto.

quick mockup with kodak model 60 lens and doorviewer viewfinder. can't beat the old blu-tack.

bought a broken eos 10d off ebay. the plan is to build a new version of skipcam (the one in the black project box). the skipcam was fine but not actually capable of representing the camera im possibly going to design. basicaslly i need to build to make a working prototype which allows users to test the functions i have identified as essential to my camera.  by using the 10d with its two control wheels i should be able to do this. i plan to use a carl zeiss tessar 50mm 2.8. this will place the aperture and focus controls on the lens. the two scroll wheels will be used for iso and shutterspeed.  shutter release for shutter release. viewfinder for viewfinder. rather than encasing the camera in  box im goung to vac form a white shell for it. the entire  camera will be on smooth blank shape with cut-outs for the button i want to provide access to.

had to go pretty deep to get the faulty card reader unit out.

broken pin up there by the chip.

the lens i intend to use.

heres how the appearane prototype is coming along.  cast in pewter with lens from praktica in a deodorant bottle casing. the rubber grip is from a prakticar 50mm. viewfinder is an eraser partially painted black. shutter release from a marker.

shot taken with the current working prototype. hopefully will get the next version going soon enough.

heres a few shots of turning the broken eos 10d into the next generation of functional prototype.

at this stage in the day the camera was still in bits for repair so i just taped the various panels on. i ended up cover tonnes of the camera in tape. i used it to smooth out features and generally mask any details. i knew the texture of the crumpled tape would show through the vac formed plastic but i though this would lend a nice "proptotypey" feel to the finished camera.

here you can see the tape over all the buttons and hotshoe.

the vac former. there is a short video at the end of this post of it in action.

the two shells and the camera. the shells are rough because i just trimmed them enough to get them off the camera. i then fitted them using a sharp knife (pictured ) and a bobbin sander.

after the workshop and the vac forming i felt quite good about this prototype so i stopped off in town on the way home and forked out the cash for a replacement cf reader unit. took about ten mins to install it and rebuild the camera.  i had taped each screw to a sheet of paper in the right formation and labeled them so it was pretty hassle free. unbelievably it came on first time. i left my cf card in the studio so i havent taken any photos but the shutter is firing and it seems to be working.

here is the camera in its ps housing. i think it came out quite well. all of the details have disappeared. its just a whit blob in a vaguely camera shape. i cut holes for what i have decided are the essential features. hopefully i got them right. just need to find someone to use the camera and see how it goes.

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.