Flash with pinhole?

[ronlamarsh]

Hi All,

I am contemplating doing some pinhole still life and would like to try using my monolight. Has anyone tried using flash with a pinhole? My f stop is 469 and my asa 50 any exposure recomendations. I was going to try metering then just flashing again a number of times for the appropriate f stop i.e. if metered at f16 at 1/30 give it 7 flashes instead of 1.

 

[fschifano]

I don't see why it wouldn't work. Exposure is going to be hit and miss because of reciprocity departure and multiple flash pops, but it should get you in the neighborhood. With an ISO of 50, I'm thinking that you're probably using PanF+ and that's not the best choice for this sort of work. The film has lousy reciprocity departure characteristics. ACROS or TMX is much better behaved under these conditions.

 

[Lee L]

You should first check your math. Going from f:16 to f:469 is 9.75 stops. That's a lot more than a 7x increase in the number of flashes needed. To gain 1 stop it's 2X the number of flashes, 2 stops is 4X the number of flashes. The factor is 2 raised to the power of the number of stops, so three stops is 2^3, or a factor of 16. 9.75 stops requires multiplying the amount of light by 860. By that time you're going to be seriously off due to the nature of adding sequential shorter exposures, and perhaps a bit bored and off on your count.

Lee

 

[Andrew K]

Hi

I use a studio floor pack (around 4000 WS) with a couple of strip lights to shoot digital pinhole on a 5D with a home made bodycap. Shooting at 1600ISO on full power I get correct exposure at about 1.5 meters...

I did once check the flash output - I think it was somewhere around F96 on 100 ISO at around 10 ft..

I've also shot film in my zero 2000 - using ISO 800 I set my old Bowens 800 around 2 feet from the subject (using a reflector) and gave around 4 or 5 pops...

The trick is to get the flash as close as possible, and remember that for every stop extra exposure you need to double the number of flashes - if you give 8 flashes and want a stop more then give 16 flashes - 2 stops more give 32 flashes....

Cheers

 

[daleeman]

Old thread but hits the mark as to what is on my mind. I have been thinking of shooting some flowers and plants with my pinhole and using the Alien Bees to light it up. Sounds like I will need to cook the flash tubes for quite a bit. My f stop is f158

Lee

 

[ic-racer]

How about some type of bulb that stays illuminated continuously for a prolonged period of time...

 

[Jim Jones]

This action photo was shot with a large reflector on the flash as close to the subject as possible http://www.pinholeday.org/gallery/2010/index.php?id=1108&Country=United+States&Province=Missouri.

 

[canuhead]

glad the business end was facing away from the camera...

 

[Mike Wilde]

I have shot kodalith in my 4x5 for portraits, so that the kids involved in the project could see the latent image in the negative come up in the developer tray.
I rate this film at 3-6iso in this situation.

To shoot at f/8 it was 2- blackline heads with 11" refectors at 4' , with 1200w/s dumped into each head. The sitter could feel the heat on thier face when the shutter was tripped.

I hate to think of the abuse on the flash tubes that this project contemplates.

 

[John Koehrer]

Get an old Ascor setup then you can daisy chain as many of the 800WS caps as you want up to about 90K WS They had a sunlight head that would allow it to go through one head.

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

PM sent...

Ken

 

[John R.]

Yeah John, that was awesome stuff, especially the sunlight head. I still have an ad from Helix touting the greatness of that sun head.

I still have two QC1000 packs that are like new and four of their striplights which are nice units. Just excellent, simple strobe gear. I use pigtails to also use heads from my Speedo gear with the Ascor packs when needed, that works great as well. To this day good Ascor gear still does a great job. Obviously it has limitations but it performs well. Just as good as my Speedo Black line stuff.

 

[JonJacob]

I love pinhole photos. Post your results!

 

[John Koehrer]

John R.
I worked for the Helix when they were still renting that stuff. One day we had a bunch of caps to be tested and someone decided to find out what happened with 'em all hooked up. 96k WS through the sunlight. Made a lot of light.

Remember, lift with your knees. =)