Macro Camera stand

A few months ago I posted some Macro photo questions and the responses were I should look at improving my lighting so in my own good time I made this macro stand. I made everything including the lampshades. It's mostly aluminum with just a few pieces of steel.

The bracket that holds the camera is attached to a lead counter weight by a fine stainless steel wire that runs up and over a teflon pulley. The counter weight rides inside the vertical stand so it's well out of the way. I can post some close ups if anyone is interested.

The vertical is made from a 1 5/8 x 1 3/8 heavy duty highway road sign unistrut. The counterweight runs inside the major channel, while the bracket that holds the camera (camera head - see second picture) is attached to T-bolts that ride in the T-Slot and counter weight balanced by a lead weight that is equivalent in weight to a D50 plus a 100mm Canon macro.

The camera head (see second picture) is made from 1" x 1/8 square tubing and 1/4" ally plate covering either side of the tubing. A plastic wheel is sandwiched in between the ally plates and attached to the shiny ally turning knob that can be turned to adjust the height of the camera head. The plastic wheel has two O-ring grooves machined into it's outer surface which make contact with the inner part of the T-Slot. The plastic handled nuts are attached to T-Bolts that pass thru the camera head into T-Slot bolts. The nuts allow the operator to adjust the contact pressure of the O-rings with the vertical to enable the wheel inside the camera head to grip the vertical. Extra tweaking of either of the plastic handled nuts also locks the camera head in place.

The lighting arms are made from 1" x 1/8" square ally tubing and 1/4 steel rod, and are fully adjustable vertically and held in place in the vertical using a felt padded steel clamp that clamps from behind and does not interfere with the camera head movement. The rest of the arms are articulated for a full range of movement. The lights are individually switched 100 W compact fluoros. The lamp shades are 0.05" ally foil curved and riveted into cones.

The baseboard is 1/2" veneered particle board ( as well as the shades) and the shades) are coated with several coats of Matt white epoxy paint and the base also has adjustable height rubber feet to enable it to be leveled on any surface.

All the ally and steel is painted matt epoxy enamel black to minimise reflections.

I love it - it works much better that the short ones we have at work.
My stand has a greater working distance (48" of vertical displacement so it provides a Canon 100 mm lens with a wider working area, and a greater range of lighting movement/adjustment than most conventional stands.

PM me if you need more details.

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Nice work.

but um they sell those already made.

they are called "copy stands" and were made to take images of documents and other flat objects.

of course; "they" dont have the higher quality of your machining!

now i know what to do with my old bogen b&w enlarger that's sitting up in the attic.

the world goes round and round.

sample shots?

i for one am impressed. way to go.

That's pretty nice, a lil above my McGyver skill level. I do however need to rig up something like this. Right now I have a mini tripod duct taped to the wall above a table. Its ghetto.

It sounds like you had fun building that.

Another option would be to just buy a used Polaroid MP4 on ebay and do some quick mods to it. You could spend all the time you'd have left over taking photos.

There's one for $200.. That's not bad.. I wish I had a mig welder..