Pinhole Attempt #2

hhhhmmmm. try other film. could be fogged. is your camera light tight? your "shutter" is not opaque is it? black electrical tape is not light proof. what is your shutter? what is your substrate for the pinhole (brass? aluminum?)

i have used very very old film. stuff from a barn, a garage, and a hot car. i have never had results similar to yours.....NOT to say your results are not from baking.

give us more info on FL and hole size. did you check out the pinhole designer? it looks like your contrast is down. pinholes with do this. i have never used your developer or film. maybe different developing techniques will help.

i would say a bit more exposure as well. try four times as much or more. you almost can never over expose a pinhole....almost. shoot three sheets. at 1 min, 3 min and 6 min. just for fun.....at the same time of day with the same lighting.

oh! and what is your "focal length" you seem to be vignetting on one side only. you should get no vignetting on a 3 inch.

I think eddie asked all the right questions. My best guess is that you have a some problems with camera design and light leaking. Is the inside of the camera completely black to avoid flare ? Also the pinhole itself may be inset too deep making a problem with angle of view and thus vignetting . Pinhole photography is fun espacially when the technical issues are out the way .

Miles

Thanks for the feedback Eddie and Miles. Let's see about these questions. The camera appears to be light tight. I put a dark cloth around it when I received it earlier this last week because the pinhole itself was blocked up with flocking material though I didn't know it at the time. I was looking to see if any light was passing through the pinhole. That is when I saw just how light tight it was. So I had to reopen the pinhole with a needle. The inside of the camera is shot with black matte flocking. It uses standard 4x5 film backs. The method of securing the film back is by two large plastic wingnut style screws that wedge against the film back. There is sufficient flocking exposed that would provide a nice light tight cushion. So I'm not worried about light tight on the camera. The shutter is my finger. Put finger over hole, remove slide, remove finger and count, finger back over hole, replace slide. The substrate for pinhole is brass. Vignetting issue I think may be caused by a bad load on the film actually.. I'm just getting used to this sheet film and using braille method to answer "did I do it right?". However there should be some vignetting on this camera as it is a 54mm focal length, but you're right Eddie it should be more even. As to the pinhole being too deep, I don't think so. I thought so at first when I got it, only because I thought my finger should touch the pinhole itself, but actually there's a black disk sandwich that the brass pinhole material is like a slice of cheese in. And due to the size of the hole, my stubby index finger won't touch the brass unless I push it straight in. I don't think its too deep because if you draw an imaginary line of the pinhole to the edge of the film and then extend the same line outward out the front of the camera it passes the edge of the black sandwich with room to spare.

What I am hearing consistently is not enough exposure time. Okay.. This is why I ask for feedback. One more try today with two sheets. I'm going to go shoot something up close to emphasize the super wide angle and I will do it twice. Once with reciprocity time as per Bergger's specifications, and once with double that (so as to simulate an extra stop). And hopefully it will be a better result. I want to make all my mistakes with this freebie film.

I'm thinking seriously about what film I would like to use for pinhole photography. Due to the gray scale emphasized with the nature of pinhole photography, I'm starting to think I should buy some of that Adox. But that's even slower than this Bergger. I have an even older box of Kodak TXP with about 30 sheets remaining. Maybe I'll fool with that also before I go buy.

if you want to shoot pinhole photos i suggest t max films. they have the best reciprocity (acros is great too but harder to get in 4x5).

i would suggest you at least triple the amount of time that bergger suggests. pinhole needs way more time. as i keep indicating you can not give it too much exposure. it is easier to print a dense neg IMO anyway. you have no real blacks in your photo. have you looked at the pinhole designer?

i think you should stick with the similar scene to help get your stuff worked out. changing to close ups is just going to add variables.

if you shoot the same scene as above again i would shoot for 5 min! i just took a meter reading and based on the scene shot and the time of day i came up with an EV reading of 10. so that would be 1/2 sec at f22. if your scene meters like this use this time. i put the info you gave int the pinhole designer. i used foma100 for the reciprocity info as i think it will match that of bergger. notice it is calling for 5 min. now i know you are thinking i have lost my mind but trust me, just try it. i am willing to bet you will get a good neg. also please note that sometimes printing in the dark room is easier than scanning till you get it all dialed in. it is for me. i will try and reproduce the exposure table below. take you meter reading at 100ASA and read oiff at f22. match ti the table below.

1/1000 1/15
1/500 1/8
1/250 1/4
1/125 1/2
1/60 1 s
1/30 9 s
1/15 24 s
1/8 53 s
1/4 2 m
1/2 5 m
1 s 12 m
2 s 32 m
4 s 2 h

if you want to shoot pinhole buy foma 100 and read off the pinhole designer sight for times. i used it for many mnay years and got great negs. souped in hc110 at 20C for 19 min at dilution 1:119 agitation every 3 min.

you should not get vignetting on a 50mm shot. it should cover easily.

keep us posted.

eddie

please see these photos:

http://photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=565448

this photo was shot during the day. it was fall but my exposure time was 6 min!:

http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=4063215

this photo was jan 1st. the time was 8 min!:

http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=4063179

i shot these in NY. so you can see it takes a lot of time with crappy reciprocity. get tmax films or just enjoy the time out and about. pinhole photography will teach/show you a lot.

maybe you should shoot your shot at 5 min and then again at 10

tri x only has slightly better reciprocity....basically it sucks too! adox sucks for reciprocity as well. so either spend alot of time, shoot cheap film (shoot arista.edu.ultra it is the same as foma but cheaper...both better than adox IMO) or lash out and get tmax.

i shot 500-800 sheets of foma with my pinhole camera! imagine how much standing around i did! then i bought tmax....and i stopped shooting pinhole photos! go figure.....i just sold off the tmax last month as a matter of fact.....i am not shooting pinhole so i used the money and bought more foma (arista.edu.ultra)

eddie gunks said:

1/1000 1/15
1/500 1/8
1/250 1/4
1/125 1/2
1/60 1 s
1/30 9 s
1/15 24 s
1/8 53 s
1/4 2 m
1/2 5 m
1 s 12 m
2 s 32 m
4 s 2 h

Click to expand...

It is 1:00 PM. I just took a meter reading. I'm going to go to the park where I shot the trees and work off this reading. At 200 ISO though (thats the Bergger speed) I get 1/125 a second at f 22. Now, according to this chart above that would be 1/2 second. I found that pinhole calculator program and it says 1/4 second for the Foma 200. I don't think I'm comparing apples with apples though. There is no chart information for Bergger except the Bergger website which has a reciprocity chart that indicates roughly 2x at 1 second and 2.5x at 10 seconds and up to 4x for 30 seconds.

I think there has to be a secondary bit to this equation. It has to be another factor for such a dim amount of light to go through to the film than the time of exposure that sort of has an exponential effect and which this pinhole calculator indicates. I just wish I knew the exact math involved for this film because then I could just bring a calculator with my meter and camera and be able to calculate at will. But it seems I have to bring my laptop heheh. Oh, and guess as to the similar film to Bergger (which I don't believe there are any similarities on the list, to be frank).

All that to say, I only have one film back. So I've got two shots at a time to mess around with. So, educated guess, I'm going to expose at 1 second, not
1/4, and another at 4 seconds. Bear in mind this is almost high noon. It sure is a windy day too.. hope the leaves will hold still for me.. guess I'm going to have to get zen like and estimate the rhythm of the wind wave effect.

i would go more......

you can NOT give it too much....BUT you CAN give it too little.

bergger will give you the same crappy reciprocity as foma.

i hope i caught you be for e you got out there.......i am betting you need more than you plan to give it.

eddie gunks said:

i would go more......

you can NOT give it too much....BUT you CAN give it too little.

bergger will give you the same crappy reciprocity as foma.

i hope i caught you be for e you got out there.......i am betting you need more than you plan to give it.

Click to expand...

I'm already back. Mixing chemicals for developer but the ambient temperature is too high.. must wait until tonight to develop. I went 3 seconds and 6 seconds. I don't understand why you say I need to give it more time when the chart provided says I should go with less time than I gave it. this is quite confusing to me, to say the least.

where/what are you metering? i metered off my trees in the shade toady and i got EV 10. so that corresponded to 5 min to get shadow detail. even if i am one stop off you still will be fine....even two stops and you will be okay. BUT one or two stops under and well....you see what happens there.

did you look at the pictures i posted in the above thread? i noted the times.

this photo was shot during the day. it was fall but my exposure time was 6 min!:

http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=4063215

if you do not get the print you are looking for after tonight's try will you try one of my suggested times?

lets see what you get. i have been wrong before........

eddie gunks said:

where/what are you metering? i metered off my trees in the shade toady and i got EV 10. so that corresponded to 5 min to get shadow detail. even if i am one stop off you still will be fine....even two stops and you will be okay. BUT one or two stops under and well....you see what happens there.

did you look at the pictures i posted in the above thread? i noted the times.

this photo was shot during the day. it was fall but my exposure time was 6 min!:

http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=4063215

if you do not get the print you are looking for after tonight's try will you try one of my suggested times?

lets see what you get. i have been wrong before........

Click to expand...

What am I metering? Ambient light from the angle I'm shooting from. There are trees in the sun, shade under the cover of the leaves, grass, sky and a foreground runt tree growing sideways which I thought would be interesting to include. I'm not spot metering just the trees.

Yes I saw your beautiful photographs. It is hard to believe you gave the exposure times you said you did for the one with the bridge in it.

And sure, I'll give another go at it. In fact I'm done developing what I took earlier today. The overall tonality is much better, and I found the cause of the vignetting (reopening pinhole with needle pushed an ever so small hangar of shrapnel over so that it obscures the light on one side of the camera only), but the fact remains the detail is still not there. I'm kind of wondering that the detail may all be blurred in the leaves because of the breeze. But there is more detail popping up in the tree trunks, though still not to my liking.

Anyway apples to apples.. I'm not going to go shooting two more now because its 5:23. I'll wait until lunch tomorrow, and then go to the park and reshoot two more. And I'm going to disassemble the pinhole part and sand it down smooth so no more vignetting.

Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts and experience with me. It means a lot. One day soon, I'm going to be far happier with this process.