The Early Days: Kodak Brownie Hawkeye and a Homemade Oatmeal Box Enlarger

 The biggest influence on the history of my photographic journey has been a limited budget. Seems I've always had to pinch and scrimp, scrounge and do without to make do with what I had. Somehow or another I managed to capture a few pictures along the way and learned a great deal about how to stretch resources well beyond what the amount should accommodate.  I also learned a great deal about photography as well.

Homemade Oatmeal Box Enlarger Diagram

I've written several times about the first camera I ever used which was a very old Kodak Nbr1 my grandparents kept in a bottom drawer. That old thing as beat up as it was, actually made surprisingly sharp and well exposed images. Later on in life my parents upgraded to a more modern version known as the Kodak Brownie Hawkeye. They had the deluxe model with an attachable flash unit. It had some nice features with look down see through viewfinder, and a long exposure switch and a classic Art-Deco styling. It was a nice little camera for the day. When I was about 13 maybe 14 years old my good friend Rocky somehow or another developed an interest in photography and started developing his own film and prints. His mom even purchased for him a starter darkroom set that included a basic enlarger plus all the necessary processing trays, a film canister along with the chemicals and photo paper. To both of us we felt like we were really uptown and he showed me how it all worked. We had a great time as I used that old Hawkeye camera to photograph our adventures.

It wasn't too long before I wanted my own darkroom...but...as I mentioned before, the luxury of owning my own enlarger just was not in my parents budget and certainly not in mine. Somehow or another they did manage to purchase for me the basic setup including trays, chemicals - developer, stop, fixer, paper, and a film developing canister. All I could manage to do were contact prints, but it was still fun. We had a unused closet just barely big enough for me to sit inside with a small shelf just wide enough to hold the trays and few other things. I used a single red Christmas tree light for the safety light.

It did not take long before I really wanted an enlarger, but they were just too expensive. A basic one back then cost about $49.00...pretty cheap by today's standards, but costly none-the-less for a budget minded family. That is when I had my first real MacGyver moment...photographically speaking; I could make my own enlarger. Why not? There really wasn't much to them. A light source, something to spread the light out evenly, something to hold the negative, and means to focus the image. Pretty simple really.

I raided my mom's kitchen for three oatmeal boxes. She only had two, so I persuaded her to buy another one, a smaller box really and she did, storing the contents in a Tupperware container and letting me have the boxes.

The two full size boxes would become the main body with the smaller box perfectly fitting inside the larger one acting as the lens holder and a slider style focus control. I made a negative holder cut out of two pieces of a cereal box that would slide between the two main body containers.

Now all I needed was a source of light, a condenser, and a lens. The light source was simple. I just used a light socket from a broken lamp and I think a 40 watt light bulb. The condenser was another problem. Even back then I understood how hot the boxes would become and that I needed the light to be diffused enough to create an evenly spread light to avoid a hot bright spot, and I also needed something to insulate the negative from the tremendous heat developed by the light bulb. I remembered out in the garage was a oversized light bulb that no longer worked. 

The bulb part of the light was much larger than a regular bulb, almost exactly the same diameter as the oatmeal box. It fit perfectly inside once I cut a hole in the top to allow the long piece to extend out. I carefully chipped out the business end of the bulb removing the contacts and the internal filaments leaving just the frosted bulb and neck with its metal twist on fitting. I cover the external parts with black paper to avoid contaminating light. I filled the large bulb with water which acted like a huge lense and spread the light out in a near perfect pattern. It also insulated the negative from the hot 40 watt bulb.

The lens was next. It just so happened I had an old BB gun rifle scope that I no longer used. The objective lens, or front lens, was a pretty good coated multi element lens which I could easily remove by unscrewing the retainer ring. It was slightly larger than a nickel...I'd guess maybe f/5.6. That lens was simply wedged into a small hole cut in the center of the bottom of the smaller oatmeal box.

I positioned the enlarger horizontally using some small pieces of wood to hold it in place...it was just easier to work with that way...and created a small easel to hold the contact paper on the adjacent wall. The first test worked beautifully...I inserted a negative. Switched on the light...and by sliding the lens holder back and forth focused the negative on the easel backing. It was beautiful!...and it cost me virtually nothing. I could easily make up to 5x7 enlargements and even tried 8x10's but my little closet darkroom just was not large enough to allow for that much required spacing.

Over the years my photographic skills and equipment have improved considerably, but those early days established a foundation from which I could build. Oddly enough, budget is still an issue and even though I would like to upgrade my equipment, I've learned to make do with what I have...and it all started back in that little closet darkroom and a homemade oatmeal box enlarger.