If you’re going to take a photo of something as majestic as Italy’s Dolomites, you’ll want a camera good enough to capture it in all its beauty. A big one too. Like, a massive one. Unsatisfied with the options available, photographer Kurt Moser decided to build a big-arse camera of his own… into the back of a 4.5-tonne Ural truck.
The project started out on Kickstarter and has since been successfully funded. Moser’s plan is to build a chunkier version of his “Baby” — a large-format bellows camera that captures ultraviolet light — into a Ural truck.
How much bigger? Well, the current camera can snap images 50x60cm in size. The upgraded model? 150cm.
And this will not be a regular camera. OK, given its size, it’s already pretty far away from “regular”, but it’ll be even less regular as it’ll take “ambrotypes”:
In 1850 Frederick Scott Archer developed the ambrotype. He borrowed the name for this technique from the Greek; ‘ambrotos’ meaning immortal. This process involves coating fine black Cathedral glass sheets with hand-mixed collodion emulsion, sensitising them in a silver plating bath and exposing them in a large-scale bellows camera. Finally, the pictures are developed in a dark room while still wet, set and sealed with sweet-smelling lavender oil and sandarac resin.
If you’d like to see some snaps taken in this way, here’s a clip with examples:
Going by the Kickstarter dates, the project should deliver by December next year.
[Lightcatcher, via Shutterbug]