My pinhole just made a black dot. :(

rpavich · Dec 10, 2017

I needed something to do so I got shoebox, painted the inside black, made a lens out of the metal of a soda can with a pin hole in it, and used Ilford MGIV paper to expose on.
All I got was a black dot. I'm not sure what's wrong.
I tried moving the paper closer to the "lens" and that just made a bigger dot.

Any idea what's happening?

I'm shooting indoors and outdoors it's cloudy, not sure if that's relevant.

DWThomas · Dec 10, 2017

What were you pointing it at? My quick take is that in my limited use of paper for pinhole, exposures were up toward a minute or more outdoors in bright sun. In ordinary indoor lighting, one could possibly need to approach hours. The image will be a negative, so a black spot could be from a bright pinpoint source that was the only thing able to reach a visible threshold. That is, I'm thinking maybe you just need way more exposure. You haven't really told us much -- pinhole diameter, distance from "film plane," what you were shooting or a general magnitude of the exposure. Did you figure out an f-stop for your camera or take any light readings with a meter?

Edit: Oh yeah, and the emulsion needs to face the pinhole -- don't ask me how I know that!

That's my 1.3 (after tax) cents ...

rpavich · Dec 10, 2017

DWThomas said:
What were you pointing it at? My quick take is that in my limited use of paper for pinhole, exposures were up toward a minute or more outdoors in bright sun. In ordinary indoor lighting, one could possibly need to approach hours. The image will be a negative, so a black spot could be from a bright pinpoint source that was the only thing able to reach a visible threshold. That is, I'm thinking maybe you just need way more exposure. You haven't really told us much -- pinhole diameter, distance from "film plane," what you were shooting or a general magnitude of the exposure. Did you figure out an f-stop for your camera or take any light readings with a meter?

Edit: Oh yeah, and the emulsion needs to face the pinhole -- don't ask me how I know that!

That's my 1.3 (after tax) cents ...

That might be it I guess.
Not sure what the pinhole diameter was, just a sewing needle diameter. The distance to the film plane is front-to-back-shoebox size so I"m going to say about 5" or so.
I just set the camera on my counter and opened the shutter for 5 minutes. I had several lamps and lights on but my house isn't very bright..it's f/2.8 1/15th at ISO 400 most of the time.

NedL · Dec 10, 2017

I think Dave's got it right... about a minute or two in a full sunlit scene with a normal-ish pinhole of .3 or .4mm and a 5 inch "focal length". Probably there was something bright in your scene that managed to make the black dot ( a lightbulb, or window? )

Unless you really light up your subject, and get close to it, indoor pinhole paper negatives take a LONG time.. several hours easily. If the lighting is incandescent ( not much blue ) it can be even longer. On the other hand, if you use a couple CFLs right on a subject, put the camera pretty close to it, you can get exposures in the 2-3 minute range, or even less.

( I added that 2nd paragraph at the same time Theo was responding below... )

Theo Sulphate · Dec 10, 2017

Given those conditions and that your paper is magnitudes slower than ISO 400, my guess is that for an indoor photo you'll need an exposure of 30 minutes to an hour at least.

rpavich · Dec 10, 2017

Theo Sulphate said:
Given those conditions and that your paper is magnitudes slower than ISO 400, my guess is that for an indoor photo you'll need an exposure of 30 minutes to an hour at least.

Thanks you guys, I guess that's it. I might (just for fun) set it back up and leave it for an hour and see what happens. Otherwise, I'm going to wait for a sunny day.

NedL · Dec 10, 2017

Or even a whole day... there was a guy on Flickr a long time ago who used to travel a lot for business... before he left he'd open a pinhole camera w/ a paper neg... the exposures were days. Some of them were really neat ( changing light from windows, etc.... ).

DWThomas · Dec 10, 2017

Hmmm -- just in a wild guess -- typical f-stops for pinholes are up around f/250 to f/300 -- such as a half mm hole at five inches would be about 125/0.5 yields f/250. According to Pinhole Designer one would need to multiply the shutter speed meter reading at f/22 by 129! The other catch is that a film-style ISO for printing paper tends to be down in the single digits, or nearly so.

I just looked up something from Pinhole Day in 2012 -- I was using 25 second exposures on Arista RC Grade #2 paper with an f/210 pinhole on a sunny day. It always catches me a bit, but extending that to five minutes would only be about four stops, which is likely not enough to be indoors. At least as far as I know, unlike many films, paper doesn't come into reciprocity failure at minutes long exposures. That helps a little.

rpavich · Dec 10, 2017

DWThomas said:
Hmmm -- just in a wild guess -- typical f-stops for pinholes are up around f/250 to f/300 -- such as a half mm hole at five inches would be about 125/0.5 yields f/250. According to Pinhole Designer one would need to multiply the shutter speed meter reading at f/22 by 129! The other catch is that a film-style ISO for printing paper tends to be down in the single digits, or nearly so.

I just looked up something from Pinhole Day in 2012 -- I was using 25 second exposures on Arista RC Grade #2 paper with an f/210 pinhole on a sunny day. It always catches me a bit, but extending that to five minutes would only be about four stops, which is likely not enough to be indoors. At least as far as I know, unilke many films, paper doesn't come into reciprocity failure at minutes long exposures. That helps a little.

Thanks that confirms what others have been saying.
If this works at least a little I'm thinking about buying some 4 x 5 film. I'd love to make some contact prints from what I get. (eventually)

afriman · Dec 10, 2017

rpavich said:
If this works at least a little I'm thinking about buying some 4 x 5 film. I'd love to make some contact prints from what I get. (eventually)

You can, of course, make contact prints from paper negatives.

Theo Sulphate · Dec 10, 2017

I've used my pinhole camera (Zero Image 2000, 6x6 format, f/138) far more often than I ever thought I would. In fact, I have film in it now. It's just a whole different way of visualizing.

rpavich · Dec 10, 2017

afriman said:
You can, of course, make contact prints from paper negatives.

Interesting! I had no idea.

Theo Sulphate said:
I've used my pinhole camera (Zero Image 2000, 6x6 format, f/138) far more often than I ever thought I would. In fact, I have film in it now. It's just a whole different way of visualizing.

That sounds cool, ill look it up.

NedL · Dec 10, 2017

I was out with the dog ( my avatar there, her name is "Mango" ) and a coffee can pinhole camera with a 5x7 piece of photopaper in it just before I came home and saw this thread! I stuck it in the middle of a trail in an oak forest... some other people came along with a dog after it had sat there for 4 minutes, so I had to stop the exposure... probably it wasn't enough... I was planning to let it sit about 10 minutes. They do contact print nicely. It's a lot of fun... I almost think of it as a separate hobby from my film photography...

I've been using Adorama RC paper for a long time, it's inexpensive and works well for paper negatives ( a little faster than MG IV ). I noticed in my last batch, the paper is a little thinner than it used to be... which should be a good thing for contact printing. Dead Link Removed for $50, which works out to about 20 cents each.. so you can feel free to try different things and experiment and have fun... also it's quick and easy to develop them, compared to film.

rpavich · Dec 10, 2017

NedL said:
I was out with the dog ( my avatar there, her name is "Mango" ) and a coffee can pinhole camera with a 5x7 piece of photopaper in it just before I came home and saw this thread! I stuck it in the middle of a trail in an oak forest... some other people came along with a dog after it had sat there for 4 minutes, so I had to stop the exposure... probably it wasn't enough... I was planning to let it sit about 10 minutes. They do contact print nicely. It's a lot of fun... I almost think of it as a separate hobby from my film photography...

I've been using Adorama RC paper for a long time, it's inexpensive and works well for paper negatives ( a little faster than MG IV ). I noticed in my last batch, the paper is a little thinner than it used to be... which should be a good thing for contact printing.

Good to know somethings going to happen! Im also a fan of adorama paper.

NedL · Dec 10, 2017

off to develop mine now.. have fun with it!

rpavich · Dec 10, 2017

It worked!!! Not the greatest, but it proved the concept. it will be fun outside if the weather gets better.

NedL · Dec 10, 2017

Very cool. There's something particularly neat about making a photograph with nothing but a shoebox or a tin can with a tiny hole in it. I've been doing it for a while and I still get a kick out of it.

Here's the one I made today:

Taylor Mountain Trail par Ned, on ipernity

It was developed into a positive using hydrogen peroxide and re-developed with thiocarbamide, like you can read about in this thread.

rpavich · Dec 11, 2017

NedL said:
Very cool. There's something particularly neat about making a photograph with nothing but a shoebox or a tin can with a tiny hole in it. I've been doing it for a while and I still get a kick out of it.

Here's the one I made today:

Taylor Mountain Trail par Ned, on ipernity

It was developed into a positive using hydrogen peroxide and re-developed with thiocarbamide, like you can read about in this thread.

Awww, that's really nice. Much better than I got. I had a kitchen light in the frame and it blew out big time...total block up.

Arctic amateur · Dec 11, 2017

afriman said:
You can, of course, make contact prints from paper negatives.

Just be aware that the paper has structure which may show up on the final print. Just hold a blank piece of paper up against a lamp and you'll see what I mean.

mgb74 · Dec 11, 2017

I'm planning to make pinhole cameras in a couple of weeks with grandkids. But I decided to go high-tech - I'll use the small tins for candy and cookies. I'm hoping they'll be light tight enough; if not some black electrical tape will do it. Pinhole goes in the bottom, paper held to the top with magnets. Painted flat black inside. The tins I'm using will fit a 3 1/2 x 7 sheet of paper.

rpavich · Dec 11, 2017

mgb74 said:
I'm planning to make pinhole cameras in a couple of weeks with grandkids. But I decided to go high-tech - I'll use the small tins for candy and cookies. I'm hoping they'll be light tight enough; if not some black electrical tape will do it. Pinhole goes in the bottom, paper held to the top with magnets. Painted flat black inside. The tins I'm using will fit a 3 1/2 x 7 sheet of paper.

I'm going to try the oatmeal canister today.

afriman · Dec 11, 2017

Arctic amateur said:
Just be aware that the paper has structure which may show up on the final print. Just hold a blank piece of paper up against a lamp and you'll see what I mean.

True, but in my experience it's less of an issue than one might think. Just do a Google search for some fine examples of prints from paper negatives. Here's a random one: http://www.filmwasters.com/forum/index.php?topic=4100.0

It's the emulsion side of the "negative" that makes direct contact with the other sheet. The paper base is slightly "out of focus", as it were, so the texture isn't very prominent in the print. The low contrast of the texture also makes it less obvious.

My pinhole just made a black dot. :(

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