Zero Image

Perry Way · Dec 2, 2009

I'm so excited!

I just got done sending my Paypal payment to Zone Image for one of their fancy schmancy 4x5 models - the 75B Deluxe model. A bit pricey, but not really, at $265. It comes with a cable release shutter, three pinhole sizes on a turret and also three zone plates on the same turret so I could shoot some zone plate photography too, with the very same camera.

I am so stoked! Can barely wait!

It's a framed site so you need to go to the home page to navigate around but here's the camera I bought:

4x5 75B Deluxe

Their home page:

http://zeroimage.com

Mal · Dec 2, 2009

I bought one of these a while ago and love it... The images are a lot sharper with a pinhole than I expected... Be prepared for long exposures even in reasonable light... This one took 96 minutes @ 75mm...

http://www.redbubble.com/people/mal64/art/4032698-1-still-life-seed-pods-pinhole-image

bobwysiwyg · Dec 2, 2009

Mal said:
I bought one of these a while ago and love it... The images are a lot sharper with a pinhole than I expected... Be prepared for long exposures even in reasonable light... This one took 96 minutes @ 75mm...

http://www.redbubble.com/people/mal64/art/4032698-1-still-life-seed-pods-pinhole-image

Nice shot, definitely worth the wait.

bobwysiwyg · Dec 2, 2009

Mal said:
I bought one of these a while ago and love it... The images are a lot sharper with a pinhole than I expected... Be prepared for long exposures even in reasonable light... This one took 96 minutes @ 75mm...

http://www.redbubble.com/people/mal64/art/4032698-1-still-life-seed-pods-pinhole-image

I thought about this shot after making my previous post. I'm curious, how did you arrive at what appears to be such an extreme exposure time?

Pinholemaster · Dec 2, 2009

Congratulations. Great camera.

I made this image with the ZeroImage 4x5 using only the front 25mm section.

Dead Link Removed

Wrobel Photographic · Dec 2, 2009

I have the 75B Deluxe as well. Great camera and as Mal said, the images are sharper than you would expect. Especially if you have gotten used to using homemade pinholes.

Mal · Dec 2, 2009

bobwysiwyg said:
I thought about this shot after making my previous post. I'm curious, how did you arrive at what appears to be such an extreme exposure time?

Well... I used my light meter and it gave me a reading (can't remember what it was)... The Zero Image scale suggested the at f216 I should use a particular shutterspeed and at that shutterspeed I should multiply the time by 12 to account for the reciprocity failure of the film...

I'm pretty sure there is a significant amount of leeway in these times but that's all part of the fun of "low tech" photography... Working it all out in your head adds to the fun of getting it right.

PS: Take notes...

bobwysiwyg · Dec 2, 2009

Mal,

Thanks for the follow-up. It does sound like fun and something I would like to try. I might wait until I get a better handle on figuring out how to use a traditional 4x5 cam though.

Perry Way · Dec 2, 2009

Wrobel Photographic said:
I have the 75B Deluxe as well. Great camera and as Mal said, the images are sharper than you would expect. Especially if you have gotten used to using homemade pinholes.

After seeing Thomas Bertilsson's results with his Zero Image and wondering just how come he was getting much sharper images than me, I decided to investigate and this is when I decided to make this purchase.

Does anyone want to buy my 4x5 pinhole camera I will no longer be using? It's only a few months old, and I've replaced the thick brass pinhole plate with a much much thinner material. It no longer produces overly swirly streams of reflected light in backlit images. Dirt cheep price!

nsurit · Dec 2, 2009

You will love your Zero Image. Buy a good book. You might need one while waiting on your superb exposures. Biill Barber

Poisson Du Jour · Dec 2, 2009

I second nsurit. You will go head over heels for the beautiful Zero Image cameras. Really, the quality and attention to detail is astounding.
My 6x9 deluxe multi-format I purchased is a joy to use, though an often brutal reminder of how darned lucky we are with modern SLRs or even MF/LF cameras: so primitive yet so successful: we're going back 600 years I think and the results achievable are quite startling against the clinically perfect and tack-sharp images we normally strive for. I don't know anybody at the moment using a Zero Image 4x5 but that may change. Some local images on Zero Image pinhole are beginning to bob up on Flickr.

Chazzy · Dec 2, 2009

Mal said:
I bought one of these a while ago and love it... The images are a lot sharper with a pinhole than I expected... Be prepared for long exposures even in reasonable light... This one took 96 minutes @ 75mm...

http://www.redbubble.com/people/mal64/art/4032698-1-still-life-seed-pods-pinhole-image

That's sharper than I expected from a pinhole image.

Perry Way · Dec 2, 2009

Pinholemaster said:
Congratulations. Great camera.

I made this image with the ZeroImage 4x5 using only the front 25mm section.

Dead Link Removed

Wow, those are some nice photos. Color sure looks good too with pinhole. I have shot some Ektachrome from 1980's recently. Most of it looking pretty good for how many years expired. I can't wait to shoot all the rest of this Ektachrome and Fuji Velvia I have when my Zero Image is in my hands. It got shipped today! Yay!!

While looking around the Zero Image site, I found this in one of the galleries, from Scott Speck:

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This is one of the most interesting pinhole shots I've ever seen.

vdonovan · Dec 3, 2009

Mal said:
I bought one of these a while ago and love it... The images are a lot sharper with a pinhole than I expected... Be prepared for long exposures even in reasonable light... This one took 96 minutes @ 75mm...

http://www.redbubble.com/people/mal64/art/4032698-1-still-life-seed-pods-pinhole-image

That is a damned nice picture.

Poisson Du Jour · Dec 3, 2009

Many pinholers sharpen their scans before placing on the web; I'm assuming this image might have been sharpened to increase definition on the web, as images are generally not so sharp or well-defined by pinhole nature: they are soft, fuzzy, but a lot depends on the quality of the pinhole itself (the brass shimmy). That is what can really have an effect on the image.

All the same, it is a great pic; either angling the camera steeply up or, even more whacky, lying on your back looking up/sitting up. Terrific. Something to try when I visit a sea cave...

FM2N · Dec 3, 2009

I have been shooting w/pinhole cameras for the past couple of years and i still do not understand why people keep talking about the images being,
"generally not so sharp or well-defined by pinhole nature: they are soft, fuzzy" I have made and have seen some amazingly sharp images. Sharp enough the my photography teacher has trouble telling when I shoot with a lensed camera or with my pinhole.
Sorry if this rubs anyone the wrong way but it is very tiring.
Arthur

Perry Way · Dec 3, 2009

FM2N said:
I have been shooting w/pinhole cameras for the past couple of years and i still do not understand why people keep talking about the images being,
"generally not so sharp or well-defined by pinhole nature: they are soft, fuzzy" I have made and have seen some amazingly sharp images. Sharp enough the my photography teacher has trouble telling when I shoot with a lensed camera or with my pinhole.
Sorry if this rubs anyone the wrong way but it is very tiring.
Arthur

I agree with the possibility for very sharp images. From what I can grasp, the sharpness has a lot to do with several factors.

1. Diameter of pinhole. The smaller the diameter, the sharper the image.
2. The material the pinhole is made out of. Shiny thick brass plate or sheet metal yields fuzzy image. If any backlighting conditions exist, it causes reflections inside the pinhole "tube" and causing major swirls and refractions or aberrations on the negative. Thin, dark, opaque material makes sharper image.
3. Dimmer conditions where lighting is more even (such as interior shots with ambient lighting) make for long exposures but very sharp images.
4. Bright lights tend to scatter light inside of the cheeper or home built pinhole cameras and while faster to expose, result in more fuzzy or rather less contrast which makes it look less sharp.
5. Camera shake. Or wind shake, like photographing trees outside in the wind with a 3 minute exposure. You will not get ANY sharp image that way.

Likely I am missing some more.

Ross Chambers · Dec 3, 2009

You may be interested to see what the zone plate setting is capable of. It's highly trial and error, to me anyway.

BTW I find the 50mm pinhole setup the most interesting, sometimes the 25mm can be extreme (watch out for the tripod in shot), the 75mm starts to look a little like a not so good LF wide angle lens.

Regards - Ross

Ross Chambers · Dec 3, 2009

You may be interested to see what the zone plate setting is capable of. It's highly trial and error, to me anyway.

BTW I find the 50mm pinhole setup the most interesting, sometimes the 25mm can be extreme (watch out for the tripod in shot), the 75mm starts to look a little like a not so good LF wide angle lens.

Regards - Ross

bvy · Dec 3, 2009

FM2N said:
I have been shooting w/pinhole cameras for the past couple of years and i still do not understand why people keep talking about the images being,
"generally not so sharp or well-defined by pinhole nature: they are soft, fuzzy"

Ditto. I've been having fun this past year with the classic Quaker Oats DIY pinhole camera. Not to brag, but my first results were so sharp that I was almost disappointed (I was specifically hoping for something soft, artsy, dreamlike). For example:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/35166624@N03/4093582101/

FM2N · Dec 3, 2009

BVY Have you been to the f295 symposium in Pittsburgh?

SMBooth · Dec 3, 2009

bvy said:
Ditto. I've been having fun this past year with the classic Quaker Oats DIY pinhole camera. Not to brag, but my first results were so sharp that I was almost disappointed (I was specifically hoping for something soft, artsy, dreamlike). For example:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/35166624@N03/4093582101/

So your saying that image was not sharpened? I sharpen most my pinhole images after being scanned. Have not had the chance to enlarge and print in the traditional way yet.

Poisson Du Jour · Dec 3, 2009

My personal belief that sharpening pinhole images for display in the web is a travesty of the truth. The images were not created sharp by the camera and should not be represented as such, by some stretch that the photographer believes it should be sharper to match his usual standard.

I do concede that some sharpening is necessary to at least overcome inherent failings in simple scanning and subsequent displaying, but too many images I have seen are deranging the ethereal softness of pinhole so that the result resembles the tack-sharp images of SLRs, MF or LF! The question is, why? Definition, not sharpness, is the technical bit of pinhole and is best appreciated viewing the negative of a print. Leave the the image as the pinhole created it and delight in primal way of the camera obscura.

bvy · Dec 3, 2009

FM2N said:
BVY Have you been to the f295 symposium in Pittsburgh?

I have not. That's for real photographers (!). I'm just a guy making cameras out of stuff from the kitchen.

SMBooth said:
So your saying that image was not sharpened? I sharpen most my pinhole images after being scanned. Have not had the chance to enlarge and print in the traditional way yet.

Right. No sharpening or other Photoshop trickery. View it full size though, because I think Flickr applies sharpening to images it resizes for display.

Poisson Du Jour said:
My personal belief that sharpening pinhole images for display in the web is a travesty of the truth. The images were not created sharp by the camera and should not be represented as such, by some stretch that the photographer believes it should be sharper to match his usual standard.

Amen to that. I don't even sharpen my digital photos anymore. Maybe I should (or could), but sharpness looks much better when the lens delivers it.

SMBooth · Dec 3, 2009

bvy said:
Right. No sharpening or other Photoshop trickery. View it full size though, because I think Flickr applies sharpening to images it resizes for display.

Yes the full size is what I would agree is pinhole sharp, flickr does sharpen for resize.

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