Camera building Paperback – January 30, 2015

Very disappointed with the book. What little information regarding the design aspect is so vague as to make it nearly useless. I kept the book but I’m not sure why.

I am giving this 5 stars because this book is exactly what I was looking for. Now to note this book does not have any plans or step by step building instruction for a camera. This is a starting point to get an understanding what goes into making a camera. There are designs, however I would use these as a basic guide to design and build a camera that suits you. If you want a step by step build look elsewhere, or get a pre-made kit to assemble a camera. I say 'a camera' rather than 'your camera' because you are simply taking the IKEA approach. Not a bad approach just not what this book is about. However if you want to design your own camera with features that you want and skip over ones that you do not need, THIS IS THE BOOK! Most books are about the capabilities of field cameras, where as this is more on the construction and how the workings interact. The descriptions can be vague at times but I found the information to be very useful.Again nothing wrong with wanting a step by step or a kit build. This book would only disappoint you if that is what you are looking for, see other lower star reviews. I read them before my purchase and they tend to say the same thing, this was not what they were expecting. So dear reader, I want you to have a very clear depiction of this books intention and contents.

I have been looking high and low for an easy set of plans to follow to build a large format camera. I had hoped this was the book...it is not. It does show some different designs but I am not experienced with camera making and cannot fill in the dimensional blanks etc!

There are very few information how to build LF camera. No plans, no part dimensions. Just very basic level ☹

A good get started book on the subject. Kirby takes the seemingly difficult and turns it into a doable process.

Kirby is a nice photographer. Very nice coffee table book.as far as building a camera from this book forget it.go elsewhere for if you want to build your own camera

very disappointed, more like a flyer. I would not buy or recommend if I had seen it in advance...

Having found Mr. Kirby's camera building website very useful over the years it's a treat to have something similar in book form. Full of color photographs and diagrams of various large format cameras it's an inspiration and I look forward to getting to work on a project soon.