Pinhole camera fun!

I have been making pinhole cameras since my college days. A pinhole camera is amazingly simple technology. All that is needed is a light tight container of some sort with a pinhole poked in it to let in light.

These cameras can be as simple or as complexed as you want them to be. I have used many different containers from cookie tins, cardboard boxes and my favorite; mini Pringles chip cans.

Earlier this week I built a pinhole camera out of an old Kodak paper box left over from my newspaper days. In fact this particular box came from The Times in Ottawa, because it was the last newspaper I worked at where we actually made black and white prints from negatives. Shortly after I started, we started scanning everything, so this box is probably about 20 years old by now. This box had some photo junk in it of some sort, stored away in the back of a closet. I freed the box from it's lowly storage life and made it into a camera!

My Kodak "Professional" pinhole camera.

The "lens" of the camera is a piece of aluminum liberated from a pop can. A Sun Drop pop can to be exact. A sewing needle is gently drilled through the aluminum, and then it is lightly sanded to remove the burr and then taped to the front of the box. You can see my fancy tape job as well as my tape "shutter"  which is just a piece of black electrical tape.

The "film" in this particular camera is 8x10 photographic paper. Photographic paper is light sensitive, and I think has an ISO rating of about 3 which makes it a pretty slow emulsion. Not quite as slow as wet plate collodion, but still pretty slow. You can use regular film in your pinhole camera, I just like the ease of loading a camera with photo paper, because you can load and unload the camera in a red safe light darkroom.

Here is the camera, with the "film"  some Ilford pearl finish RC paper. Ilford paper in a Kodak box, that is just blasphemy!

 After building the camera, I took it outside and made some exposures. After a little bit of trial and error, I found the magic exposure number to be about one minute under mostly overcast afternoon skies.

The photos were processed in a makeshift darkroom in my windowless bathroom. All that was needed was a card table, one safe light, trays and photo chemistry.

My pinhole darkroom under safelight conditions.

A negative sits in the fix, after being developed.

As you can see from the above photo, the negatives are nice and large. The size of the box determines the focal length, and this particular box becomes a super wide angle 8x10 camera. It vignettes a bit on the negative, but I like the effect.

A series of six 8x10 paper negatives drying after being developed and washed.

And the result: Pretty nice photos! The images are fairly crisp and have a good exposure. Pinhole cameras are a fun way to learn about photography, because of their simple design and the inexpensive materials needed to make images.

A view of my back yard. The heart shaped mark was made by my kids, when they built their snowman. You can just barely see the snowman in the lower right corner of the photo.

A self portrait on the back stairs of my deck. I did pretty good sitting still for a minute long exposure!

Winter Wonderland

On Sunday December 30th, I spent the afternoon in Brazil, Indiana with Lillian Grey. She is a model that I have worked with many times over the last year or so, and we have a great working relationship together.

For me, the working relationship is just as important as the shoot itself. Lillian's husband Joe was with us on the shoot. He helped me set up and tear down my studio stuff, and is a great guy to be around. In fact most of the shoot was done in a historic second story studio that Lillian and Joe are working on.

The highlight of the day, however, was shooting in the snow!! We are on our second year without a major snowfall where I am at in Illinois. There are a couple of inches on the ground right now, with grass poking up through the snow and bare in some spots. Not really beautiful winter weather. A few days before this shoot it dumped about a foot of snow in east-central Indiana and parts of Illinois just south of here. So I knew I would have to drive a bit to get some nice snow photos.

Driving to Brazil was an amazing transformation. As I drove further east and south of my home the snow started piling up. The hills in Indiana, with snow covered tree trunks, snow drifts and frozen rivers were just amazing to look at through the filtered light of the afternoon sun.

Lillian was going to wear this beautiful white wedding gown. I knew that white on white was going to be a challenge. We waited until about a half hour before sunset to make the images, so the dynamic range of the dress and snow would work out without blowing out the highlights.

It was a balmy 35 degrees during the day, but the temperatures fell and the wind chill became wicked cold by the time we started shooting. Lillian of course was a true professional, and she handled the shoot with amazing grace, poise and focus. We spent only about 20 minutes on this shoot before the cold and the setting sun took away all the available light. It was quick but so worth it!

The shoot was a success, and we both spent about a half hour in front of the heater to warm up but it was worth it! If you would like to see more photos from this shoot, follow this link to my Facebook Fan page. If you like what you see, click the "like" button and get automatic updates to your Facebook feed as I add photos to my site.

I am open for bookings to schedule fun and creative portrait work. I love working with new people especially in locations I haven't photographed. Just send me a message if  you are interested.

Take care, and enjoy the new year!!!