Copy Paper Box Pinhole, and Night Sky Advice

[Bluetintedescapegoat]

Hey all..

My photo class is getting ready for World Pinhole Day and the idea was to do something from scratch using found materials and such...

I'm using a standard size copy paper box with a hole I poked my self with a pin.

I forget the actual size but our teacher mentioned its a pretty standard size needle for pinholes.

Its all sanded down and ready to go.

Here are my questions.

I'm going to be using Arista or Ilford RC for my exposures. I have some comps in mind already...

I'm thinking 4-5pm landscapes to try and grab those awesome shadows...

Do you think I'm looking 5-10 minutes in that kind of daylight?

Also,

If I wanted to leave a similar box in the middle of a field for like 6 hours do you think I could catch star trails at night?

 

[bsdunek]

You should be able to get some idea of exposure with a guide from Mr. Pinhole http://www.mrpinhole.com/index.php. You will still have to experiment to zero in on the best exposure. Night photography should be interesting - I have never tried that with a Pinhole camera.
Just keep playing with it and you'll get a handle on it.

 

[vdonovan]

Night pinhole can be done!

Taken with Fuji 3000b Instant film with a medical Polaroid camera modified with a Prontor shutter and 5mm pinhole. Exposure time about 7 minutes.

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

For sunset exposures, use a hand-held meter to either incident+average several areas (light and shadow) or spot meter them, then extrapolate the readings to the pinhole.

Star trails are easy enough with an SLR in Bulb (with the requisite knowledge of where to poke the camera into the sky for the best results!), but a pinhole has extreme depth of field thus exposures are very, very long, maybe around 8-12 hours, and then reciprocity failure must be taken into account. No separate meter will assist there — it needs experimentation. Choose a field that is remote enough that curious individuals will not approach the camera (nor for that matter animals that wander in the night: in Australia, kangaroos are a persistent problem, bumping into the tripod!). A fast film (400-to 800iso would help), but at a basic level only a fair bit of trial and error will determine what works best.

In the early southern hemisphere Spring I will embark on some experiments for star trails with my Zero Image pinhole and Provia 100F (same as with SLR star trails capture).

 

[Bluetintedescapegoat]

Thanks guys. This helped a lot. I'm getting to know my box and its producing pretty good images. Now its just a matter of getting time right. Haven't tried the star shots but I figure on taping it to a fence post or something and going home to take a nap. Its worth a piece of RC try it out.

 

[bsdunek]

Taken with Fuji 3000b Instant film with a medical Polaroid camera modified with a Prontor shutter and 5mm pinhole. Exposure time about 7 minutes.

I'm sure you made a typo on the 5mm pinhole. Just so someone else doesn't understand and make one that big - do you mean 0.5mm?