New to it. Need feedback.

This image was made with a 4x5 camera, 62mm f. lenght, 0,3mm ems aperture. Film is PanF 120 6x7, souped in Caffenol (which gave me this time a myriad of tiny black spots in the negative although this one is particularly clean). Neg wet scanned in Epson V700, no sharpening, just levels and gamma adjusting.
I'm posting in another pinhole forum but not getting the feedback one's need to evolve.
Please...

Excellent composition. So many people blow that part of the photo. Should make for a real nice print. The only thing I would address is that when you print it, I would burn in the sky area a LITTLE in the top left corner so that your eye doesn't follow out of the picture. Otherwise it's great. Perfectly balanced.

I see things like this and always think "oooh, I should try LF", But then I remember that I live in Florida, and the only place you see anything that even remotely resembles your shot is at the Treasure Island miniature goofy golf course on the beach drive. They DO have live 'gators, but it wouldn't be the same.

I'm puzzled why someone would go through the rigmarole of large format photography and wet scanning when cafenol is being used as a developer. Surely it's not an exact science and will only raise the wrong kinds of questions that could easily be answered by using any reasonably affordable, consistent developer and standardized process. I don't mean any of this in an ill manner, but really I don't get it. OK, if you're in it for experimentation and kicks, wouldn't a holga be more effective?

Nice picture btw ;-)

Ghostman said:

I'm puzzled why someone would go through the rigmarole of large format photography and wet scanning when cafenol is being used as a developer.

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Just wait - jnanian will answer you

It's the first time I get a weird result with caffenol. It´s pretty standardized to me. I use metrics, and a precision scale. The only mistery is the caffeic acid content in different coffee brands but the formula deal with that by the excess. But, yes, you´re right, the next time I try Pan F I'll be back to the good and old D76.
Large Format as I see it, is just the same gimnastics as the Holga thing. Just bigger, analogic insanity.
Thank you for your attention and suggestions guys.

beautiful photograph !

hi ghostman ( thanks for the intro darko ! )
i can see where you are coming from
but caffenol works as well as any conventional developer out there
i have read of users of d76 or other common film developers having
trouble with their developers too
the beautiful thing about caffenol is that it is easy to use, forgiving
and the ingredients are a bit less harsh for the ecosystem than typical pyro, catechol,metol/hq developers.
not to forget to mention, if you are stuck on a desert island with a roll of film to process, and all you have are instant coffee and your
anti-scurvy pills you can easily process your film ( and stabilize it in seawater instead of normal/standard fix ) until civilization finds you
i don't do wet scanning, but process everything from 35mm-8x10 in caffenol --- its a lot of fun

again, its not for everyone, but it works

john

jnanian said:

beautiful photograph !

hi ghostman ( thanks for the intro darko ! )
i can see where you are coming from
but caffenol works as well as any conventional developer out there
i have read of users of d76 or other common film developers having
trouble with their developers too
the beautiful thing about caffenol is that it is easy to use, forgiving
and the ingredients are a bit less harsh for the ecosystem than typical pyro, catechol,metol/hq developers.
not to forget to mention, if you are stuck on a desert island with a roll of film to process, and all you have are instant coffee and your
anti-scurvy pills you can easily process your film ( and stabilize it in seawater instead of normal/standard fix ) until civilization finds you
i don't do wet scanning, but process everything from 35mm-8x10 in caffenol --- its a lot of fun

again, its not for everyone, but it works

john

Click to expand...

Some food for thought, thank you.

I love serendipity as much as I love control. I can see myself experimenting with sustainable self methods for sure and become in some way self reliant when it comes to making pictures. I do appreciate all of the people out there who are willing to test seemingly unconventional methods. I will always have the need to make some kind of picture, if I need to use my beloved coffee and vitamin-c tablets to do so then I will.

And this one is from a paper negative , Ilford MG RC Pearl, no filter, no pré flashing. Quite old, so some fog helped me with the contrast. I managed to ruin the composition tough. Curly borders marks are velcro loops used as sealing material. No scanning. Copied with a DSLR, then Photoshop and levels, gamma et coetera...

Hi Ricardo - your composition skills are fine. With pinhole all we can hope to do is point the camera in the right direction, and pray we are including/excluding all the features we want. I find my ability to judge gets better as I take more pinhole images, but I often manage to include too much sky or pavement, or cut off something I hoped to include.
I'm not sure what your question is. At first it seemed to be about caffenol developers, and not really about pinhole photography. What are you unhappy about with your images, and how can we help you?

I'm quite happy ;-)
But I don't think I'm nailing it. Yet. I had just build it and I'm wasting some film with it. I'd like to find what respond better to pinhole. Harsh light? Later hours of the day? Low key, high key. What films are you boys using it? It's about preferences, I know. But let me hear from you. This is the good thing about this place: lots of two cents coming from somewhere!
Let me add: it looks like I'm trying to reproduce what I normally do with lenses. It seems that this is the wrong path.

I don't think there's an ideal film for pinhole. It's all about personal taste. I like the perspectives and depth of field that are unique to pinhole. I often set up close to the ground. Something very close in the foreground, and interesting receding background. These are not absolutes, just keep shooting. There'll always be wasted film, that's how we learn. The more you shoot, the closer you'll get to what YOU want.

I've got lots of pinhole (and lots of other stuff) on my website: silverlilly.zenfolio.com

P.S. We're not all boys here.

Super fine site!
Of course, we're not all boys around here. My bad.

You have two fine pinhole images. Including the edges of the film can indicate the intent of the photographer, but the viewer may be more interested in the image than in the person behind it. Those edges are distracting. The second image doesn't display a full range of tones from black to white. Printing a little darker would improve the shadows and perhaps improve the highlights. A bit more contrast may also help. Wet scanning seems unnecessary for pinhole negatives.

Optimum pinhole diameter has been argued for well over a hundred years. My tests suggest that Pinhole Designer with a user constant of 1.4 yields the highest resolution in the center of the image. This would mean a diameter of about 0.26mm for a 62mm focal length or about 80mm distance for a 0.3mm pinhole. However, sharpness falls off towards the image edges, especially with wide angle coverage, when the diameter is optimized for center sharpness. Sometimes emphasizing sharpness near the center of the image with fuzzier edges is best, but not in your two examples. A larger pinhole gives more even sharpness over the whole image. Your pinhole diameter may be ideal for your subjects and compositions. Personal preferences are even more important in pinhole photography than in traditional methods.

Pinhole photography has two significant advantages over lens work: great depth of field and economical wide angle coverage. Chose subjects that demand those characteristics for your pinhole work, and leave other subjects to lenses. This lets you concentrate on pinhole photography's strengths. The slight softness of pinhole images can also be used to advantage in some subjects. Remember, some photographers pay a lot of money for lenses that are designed to be slightly soft.

Thank you very much for your input.
These are valuable and much appreciated information.