How we built Bertha, a large format camera that will shoot 1.1×1.1 metre slides
In this technical retrospective (2020), @emptybits shares practical architectural lessons learned from running, scaling, or migrating production software under lean constraints.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Defaulting to simpler architectures (such as monolithic frameworks, SQLite, or managed VPS) prevents early engineering bankruptcy.
Evaluating true compute and egress costs reveals that high cloud bills can often be slashed by 80%+ through judicious re-platforming.
Code you write at 2 AM as a solo engineer must be easy to debug six months later without complex microservice dependencies.
Community Debate Themes:
HN engineers debated the tradeoffs between cloud convenience and raw server economics, database indexing strategies, and resisting premature architectural complexity.
CATEGORY Frugal Engineering →
HISTORICAL ERA Pandemic Bubble (2020–2022)
COMMUNITY SCORE ★ 30 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 2 comments
I've been inside a similar camera at Edinburgh's Nelson printworks which used to print maps 1:1 from the hand drawings. (Back in the seventies) It was a walk in room for the negative. Nelson printed jam labels when the map trade was quiet. Smaller artwork!
I don’t know much about the mechanics of such cameras, but wouldn’t they need to get custom lenses and custom film of that size? I would imagine it is prohibitively expensive to get one-off manufacturing done like that.