As mentioned in this post, here’s my new rig. It’s not quite finished yet, but I can assure you that it is sturdy like nothing I have seen before.
It’s DIY, except for the obvious items (rail, camera, backlight) and consists of the following parts which are tailored to fit the Kaiser panel and for digitising negatives between 24x36mm and 6x9cm.
- two pieces of 25mm thick bamboo plywood (base: 42cm x 38cm, vertical 38cm x 38 cm)
Bamboo is very stiff but brittle, the boards are fairly heavy too. Watch your fingers for cuts and splinters while you work the boards - two heavy duty right angle brackets (13cm x 38 cm x 6.5 cm)
A pair of these brackets are spec’d to carry 150 kg. - screws and washers for putting everything together and as shims to get the angles straight. The brackets are far from perfect, but one washer per bracket rectified that. I used countersunk screws to make them register the bracket tightly. The heads stick out a little bit, but the screws are nicely made, stainless steel, torx headed and easy to work with.
Brackets and boards bought in a hardware/DIY store.
The current rig is not finished yet. I plan to put the backlight below the baseboard and attach a negative holder from an enlarger. This will have to wait though, as I plan to make the rig fit both FF and APS-C cameras.
View from above, showing the camera alignment using a mirror. Note the full cage I use here, it attaches to the strap lugs too and eliminates the elasticity that we get when we attach a camera directly with its tripod socket.
Quirks: The Novoflex rail has three treads each for 1/4 and 3/8 tripod screws, but the spacings are a bit strange. If they were evenly spaced, it would be easy to mount the rail at higher or lower positions without having to perforate the backboard … but it is what it is. Having that focus stacking screw drive rail would really be nice. But it will have to wait, probably indefinitely.
Addendum: The backboard spills light back onto the image. I’ll habe to paint it black. Maybe black MDF would have solved that issue. I don’t trust MDF holding the wood screws tightly enough.