I posted a few months ago about the troubles I’d had getting my pinhole camera to work. I just let the project languish until yesterday, when I decided to tackle it again. I figured the problem had been with the hole itself, so I made a new pinhole (in aluminum foil instead of a can this time) and taped it into the oatmeal box, using the same box and shutter mechanism and all.
Looks like the pinhole was the problem, because it worked like a charm this time! The original instructions called for exposures of 20 seconds, but just doing some quick f-stop guesstimation I knew that wouldn’t be enough, so I left the shutter open for three minutes, which turned out to be just about right for an overcast day.
I was using Ilford photo paper instead of film; I made the bathroom into a darkroom, and processed them into 5x7 paper negatives, then scanned them in and made negatives of the negatives (i.e., positives) that way.
See what you think:
My driveway (The exposure came out really nicely on this one.)
My back yard (This was the first one I took; I about jumped through the roof when I realized it was working.)
And finally, a self-portrait. (Note, again, the cool curved lines on the deck. It’s very difficult to sit still for three full minutes, by the way.)
I’ve still got some work to do on figuring out exposure times; most of these are a bit overexposed. Still, I’m thrilled; this is the first time I’ve had any success whatsoever with processing my own photos.
Those are totally cool! I experimented with one a couple of weeks ago for the first time and I think I totally underexposed everything-- all was quite dark and indistinct. I need to have another go at it here soon and really leave the shutter open longer than suggested in the (kids’ toy) directions.
How are you doing the positives? The kit I have has me exposing a new piece of paper to the negative print really quickly and developing it, which is kind of cool.
I’m doing positives as simply as possible: I’m using photo paper instead of film, so I take it into the darkroom, put it in developer, then a stop bath, then fixer, and what I have is a 5x7 negative on paper.
To make a positive, I just put the negative on the computer’s scanner, then make a negative of the negative in Photoshop. It’s sort of cheating, since the entire operation up to that point is fairly low-tech, but I’m no purist.
Incidentally, for the vertical photos, I turned the oatmeal box on its side, which is why they distorted in the direction they did.
Something else I’ve seen that was totally cool was actually done in a high-rise condo in NYC. The example I saw used an entire room as a camera: the windows were covered with foil, and a small hole made. The image was projected against the opposite wall, and a camera set up against the window, next to the pin hole. The camera shutter was left open for several hours to capture the image projected on the wall. Not exactly the same thing being done here, but cool all the same.
Ahhh, this brings back memories! My science project for seventh grade was a Polaroid pinhole camera.
My father did professional industrial photography as a sideline to his career as a mechanical engineer. So I had access to a 4x5 view camera with a Polaroid back. I drilled a 1/4 inch hole in a lenscap and (this part my memory fails me in) used some sort of foil which was anodized black or had been blackened. Then I created the hole in the foil with a sewing needle. The sharpness of the picture is directly related to the smallness of the hole. Of course the smaller the hole, the longer the exposure which caused other problems, mostly solved with a good tripod.
It took pretty good pictures, but of course was most likely to fail when called upon for my actual presentation!
The coolest I have heard about was when these kids, I think European some how, put a hole in the side of a moving van. The entire truck box was a freaking pinhole camera, so it was mobile too.
I love pinhole cameras. I made one in photography when I was a sophomore. We decorated it to look like a Coke can (I spent about three hours over a light table with an Xacto knife and oak tag cutting out the “Coca Cola” stencil). It was fun, and it took awsome pictures.
