Pinhole photography: post a link to your WPPD-2014 entry

[TheToadMen]

Nice to see you've found your way back to pinhole.
I like both your shots. It's always funny how a pinhole camera warps perspective. If the car wasn't in this image, you could have fooled anyone (who doesn't know pinhole) by telling this house isn't real, but only a small model. That's why I often put the camera on the ground in the grass or something.
And building your own pinhole camera is half the fun, isn't it?

I used to be an avid f295er but got seduced by LF.
Anyway, I built an 8x10 foam-core camera from scratch, used some old, very fogged,
Kodak polymax and made some images, nothing fancy but fun nonetheless. Gotta
get some new RC paper!

the homestead:
View attachment 87039
-Tim

 

[TheToadMen]

View attachment 87031
Seems like it was raining in a few places around the world. I had limited time yesterday so went to the park at the bottom of my street.
Around 180mm focal length is my guess, but that's half the fun, making intelligent guesses!

You're in Australia? We've got the exact same toy overhere at playgrounds as well. And I'm on the other side of the globe! We call these things "wip kip".
And yes: guesstimation is an important part of the fun of pinhole photography. I often don't even bring a light meter or tripod.
Just handheld for 40 seconds on Fuji NPC160 is often my starting point.

 

[TheToadMen]

Hi Ned,
I really like your "Look Up" image. Nice dark colors too.
How did the pinhole lensbaby work out?

Here are a few on instant film. The first from this morning, the last three from the redwoods this afternoon.


Look Up! par Ned, on ipernity

 

[pdeeh]

I love your shot: composition and exposure. Almost if you had a viewfinder on your camera. The Zero is a fine camera, isn't it?

Thank you Bert ... the negative is pretty thin, though, so it remains to be seen if I can print it as well as I can post-process it

The Zero plus rollfilm back is a great combination for me, and has encouraged me to use it a lot, much more than I did when I was loading my 3 holders; It fits in a daysac when out walking (along with lunch and a compact tripod)

I only ever use a single frame, so it's a 25mm focal length, and it has taken a while to get used to the angle of view (about 120° diagonal) and visualise what it'll actually look like ... I still end up with too much foreground quite often.

 

[Toffle]

I only ever use a single frame, so it's a 25mm focal length, and it has taken a while to get used to the angle of view (about 120° diagonal) and visualise what it'll actually look like ... I still end up with too much foreground quite often.

This is my experience with my homemade Frankencamera as well. On a recent trip to Cuba, I brought only an 8" T-Pod, so the either the foreground is really (really) emphasized, or horizontal lines converge dizzyingly. On my next trip, I'm bringing a taller tripod.

Great shot, by the way.

Cheers,
Tom

 

[TheToadMen]

I only ever use a single frame, so it's a 25mm focal length, and it has taken a while to get used to the angle of view (about 120° diagonal) and visualise what it'll actually look like ... I still end up with too much foreground quite often.

Bert from Holland
http://thetoadmen.blogspot.nl

To avoid too much forground I sometimes put my finger or a stone beneath the camera, pointing it up slightly. Or I let it rest on my shoe.
But somehow I never use a tripod. Don't even know why, just don't.

 

[DWThomas]

OK, as promised ...

My WPPD 2014 activities

I actually took ten shots total, there were multiples of most views, but I whittled them down to five. All in all I'm fairly pleased with the outcome considering competition for time the past few days made it difficult to work in too much experimentation.

I see some good stuff upthread!

 

[NedL]

Dave thanks for posting the negatives too. That's a great looking camera and great results!

 

[dasBlute]

Thanks so much for sharing the entire process, that's really going the extra yard [or 10],
I especially enjoy how your seeing progressed from far to near. nice work!

OK, as promised ...

My WPPD 2014 activities

I actually took ten shots total, there were multiples of most views, but I whittled them down to five. All in all I'm fairly pleased with the outcome considering competition for time the past few days made it difficult to work in too much experimentation.

I see some good stuff upthread!

 

[DWThomas]

Dave thanks for posting the negatives too. That's a great looking camera and great results!

Thanks Ned, those negatives are a challenge! Last year when I built that camera I did paper negatives which I could scan on the venerable Epson 3200, but it's transparency mode only handles 4" width which was cool with my previous max size of 4x5. When I did tests a week ago, i set up a tripod and some serious SLR gear to photograph the negs on a light box; this time I tried a handheld shot with my high end P&S which has IS and geeze -- so much simpler! So I put them up. The contact printing was late last night and probably could have used another round of "finesse" on a few. If I were going to exhibit them, I would probably plant them in the middle of 11x14 paper, but in a hurry, I found this old package of 8x10 MGIV RC -- hey, "good enough for pinhole!"

And thanks, dasBlute, maybe I'm a frustrated educator, but I like to provide some information and context for the stuff I inflict on the web. (I'm always a little bewildered by hitting a PBase gallery where the titles show as "DCX_1029," DCX_1030" ... They just leave the camera generated file names for titles.)

"One of these days" I hope to maybe get a little more scientific with some tests on that film, maybe with some gray scales as subjects in very controlled/consistent lighting and see if I can come up with a more reliable procedure. At least I was able to handle and process the stuff without scarring it to death. Of course, I do tend to view pinhole photography as the photo version of cooking without recipes. :munch: Building the cameras may be my favorite part of it. (Backing up in that PBase gallery hierarchy will probably show you more than you wanted to know about my lens-less photography!

 

[pdeeh]

I tried taking the lid off the tank to photograph of a roll of mine while it was developing, but it came out all black.
Must have been an emulsion fault ...

 

[Thomas Bertilsson]

I haven't processed my film yet, but here's my bounty awaiting darkroom treatment. It was my first roll of Pan-F+ through the pinhole in a long time. With the weather we had all exposures were in the 4-8 minute range.

 

[Thomas Bertilsson]

The fourth one, 'Look Up!' is amazing!

Here are a few on instant film. The first from this morning, the last three from the redwoods this afternoon.

Windy Mustard par Ned, on ipernity

Luck in the Forest par Ned, on ipernity

Deep Forest Flare par Ned, on ipernity

Look Up! par Ned, on ipernity

 

[TheToadMen]

Hi Dave,
Nice images, nice camera and a very nice documentary about the proces of shooting & developing.
Very encouraging!
Thank you for sharing.
Bert

OK, as promised ...
My WPPD 2014 activities
I actually took ten shots total, there were multiples of most views, but I whittled them down to five. All in all I'm fairly pleased with the outcome considering competition for time the past few days made it difficult to work in too much experimentation.
I see some good stuff upthread!

 

[NedL]

(Thanks Thomas!)
Here are a few more from the redwoods, all are paper negatives:

This was made with a "Hello Kitty" popcorn tin. 11x14 still wet in the tray, I just took a snapshot and inverted it:


Reach for the sky par Ned, on ipernity

This one is 5x7 from a coffee can camera:


Pinhole redwoods par Ned, on ipernity

and this one from an 8x10 matboard box camera:


Deep Forest par Ned, on ipernity

Still a few left from the morning to develop, so not sure yet which is the WPPD entry. That last one is the front runner.

 

[NedL]

....
How did the pinhole lensbaby work out?

Hi Bert, my friend was not as happy with the "lensbaby" pinhole on his nice digital SLR, but the zone plate made some really wonderful images... the green in the forest had amazing living glow and highlights. It really makes me want to try zone plate. He might actually submit one of me to the WPPD site... I'll link to it here if he does. You can see the "happy glow" from a day spent pinholing!

 

[Dr Croubie]

Hi Bert, my friend was not as happy with the "lensbaby" pinhole on his nice digital SLR, but the zone plate made some really wonderful images... the green in the forest had amazing living glow and highlights. It really makes me want to try zone plate. He might actually submit one of me to the WPPD site... I'll link to it here if he does. You can see the "happy glow" from a day spent pinholing!

I've also tried both the lensbaby pinhole/zone plate, as well as the Skink pinhole/zone plate/zone sieve on my *slr. And frankly, wasn't too impressed by many of them. Maybe it's because I'm used to viewing large, but the long-exposure/high-iso noise just annoyed me too much, and blowing up from such a tiny sensor just made it all a bit too soft for my liking. Even my 6x6 pinholes from last year's WPPD weren't the best, now I'm 8x10 and larger all the way...

Curiously, I almost mistook those Instants in the forest for digitals, the flare just looked like the reflections that come from the glass over the sensor. Which film did you use? Is it really that glossy that it would cause such a flare? I've never seen that with regular film nor (rc/vc/pearl) paper. (I do like the look though, maybe I should fit the skink to a shutter and try some FP100 to try it out).

 

[DWThomas]

Heh, perhaps we try too hard -- check out this one!

 

[NedL]

.... but the long-exposure/high-iso noise just annoyed me too much, and blowing up from such a tiny sensor just made it all a bit too soft for my liking.

That's pretty much the email conversation I just had with my friend, he came to the same conclusions as you. But I still thought some of his zone plate images looked pretty neat.

.............Which film did you use? Is it really that glossy that it would cause such a flare? I've never seen that with regular film nor (rc/vc/pearl) paper....

It was FP100-C. It gets that "rainbow flare" pretty easily, sometimes outrageously. Those were actually mild! I think it happens with regular color film too. I like seeing black and white "rainbow flare" but as you said, it doesn't happen on paper all that much.

Heh, perhaps we try too hard -- check out this one!

 

[TheToadMen]

"Almost dead Canon Digital Rebel. Saltine cracker lens."
That's genius!!!

Heh, perhaps we try too hard -- check out this one!

 

[NedL]

So this is me. Be careful pinholing or you might end up like that!

Made with the lensbaby zone plate we were talking about!

 

[Nige]

this is my submission. I haven't participated in WPPD for a few years as I'm usually ferrying kids around to sport, but one has broken his leg (twice in fact.. did it again in same spot, tried a bit to hard to soon!) and is out of footy for the season. The other had a later game than usual so I managed to duck into the camera club where a few of the guys put on a regular pinhole workshop. I used some existing cameras I've made (one is matt board, the other masonite) as my time was somewhat limited. I took 6 shots, one was a dismal failure when the paper moved in the camera before exposure, but the others came out ok.

Attached are two other images.

 

[TheToadMen]

"... beam me up, Scotty: energize! ..."

So this is me. Be careful pinholing or you might end up like that!
Made with the lensbaby zone plate we were talking about!

 

[dasBlute]

Looking up, such a natural thing to do, like a kids-eye view of the world... nice work

Reach for the sky par Ned, on ipernity

 

[sly]

Here's one of my WPPD images; the first I've printed. I'm waiting for some colour 120 to come back from the lab before I choose my entry.

Shot on my 8x10 Titan, gum printed. It was a day that rushed from rain to sun and back, making lengthy setup and exposures challenging.