Camera Tripod Lamp (NFS) 1


Camera Tripod Lamp

This lamp was quite a challenge; it was the second time I created a lampshade from scratch.


The base is just a repurposed camera tripod mount that I picked up for a few bucks at an estate sale. So the first challenge was to build a wooden block that would convert the standard screw platform a tripod comes with to something that I could mount a light bulb socket to. I did this with a piece of wood, some careful drilling and cutting. Then I used conduit to connect the wood to the lamp fixture.


The shade is created from images I found of vintage camera items that I printed at home onto vellum paper. That is then wrapped around a wooden hoop the kind that is used for knitting. I used small pieces of wood for the cross braces as well as the vertical braces separating the top and bottom hoop.

hoop… there it is.

 

The upside is very low cost on this lamp shade, the downside is that it isn’t quite as strong as you would get from a standard lamp shade made with PVC. However that PVC is quite expensive. Someday I will dip my toes into using PVC, at this point I am still much better at creating lamps than I am lamp shades.

 

Will be turning this into 16″ lampshade for future projects!


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One thought on “Camera Tripod Lamp (NFS)

  • Dan Post author

    This shade was made out of vellum paper, not really that sturdy. Since then I have figured out ways of making shades that are more like commercial types using PVC and fabric. I have taken this design and expanded to to fit well on a 16″ drum shade (pictured unit was 14″ only). So if your interested I can recreate this kind of lamp.