Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day 2015 - April 26th

TheBigYin

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Okay folks - I've noticed a bit of a trend of people asking questions about pinhole cameras, conversions to existing cameras and so forth... So, always one to jump on a bandwagon, I thought I'd drop a thread about the Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day 2015, and ask if anyone is thinking of having a bit of a bash at it.

Personally, It's just the excuse I need to dig out the WPC120 Holga and run a roll of film through it whilst counting elephants in a suitably scenic location.

Though I may also dig out the "Body Cap Pinhole Lens" I made ages ago for one of the Canon EOS machines (either the EOS3, 30 or (whispers) the 7D) following the tutorial I found online here. I'm also intrigued by the idea of using extension tubes to try and make a "Telephoto Pinhole".

One thing I found when looking at pinhole resources was that lots of them want the diameter of the actual pinhole. Well - fine if you've got a "laser cut" job from somewhere... but what if you've done what I did, and made one with a bit of Irn-Bru can, a needle and some fine wet and dry paper. Well - it struck me that I had the ideal tool for the job. Plonk the pinhole plate on the scanner, scan it at a good high resolution and use the ruler tool in CS5 to get a size in pixels, then simple maths to get it back into fractions of mm's. It can also be rather revealing in that it may well show that the pinhole you thought was lovely and round was actually as rough as guts, and you really need to go back to the Irn Bru can and make another one... Ask me how I know that one ;)

So - over to you folks - hints, tips, ideas for conversions, anything goes really...
 
The Noon produced really good results, too good I think they lacked a certain charm of a diy job. Having said that I bought a cardboard 35mm kit in a charity shop last year and was going to use the lens from that for my pin box if I get it modified. I've done the scanning before and yeah all my home brew jobs looked like they'd be burrowed by a drunk mole, for quick reference a phone picture enlarged will give you a good indication how round your hole is.
 
I usually enter this, good excuse to dig out the big pinhole this year I think.
 
well - I had a bit of a play (on the digital to my shame) with the idea of using extension tubes to get a "longer lens" effect, and blow me if it didn't work rather nicely... Think It might have to be something to try with the EOS-3 (purely because I know I can just stick it on A and let it take care of the exposure for me) but, it's got to be worth a roll of OOD something or other, hasn't it...

Also, just to take the next step... I suppose using a Macro Bellows would effectively give me a Zoom Pinhole - now that's a rather cool idea!
 
Last year I bought a pinhole for my Pentax MX and never got round to using it... slightly scared off by some of the terminology, I suspect (eg it took me ages to realise that the focal length of a pinhole body cap is pretty much the registration distance... if that is actually true!).

Anyway, I'm no longer sure where the pinhole is, and I'm supposed to be only using the CL anyway! :(
 
I've always been quite interested in pinhole photography but I know very little about it and have never tried it. I think I might have a bit of a read and have a go!
 
Ok so I was a bit bored on a Friday afternoon so I decided to make a pinhole lens and have a quick play. Popped to maplins and bought a set of tiny drill bits, then went home and put a teeny tiny hole in a casino membership card I had lying around from a weekend away last month. Stuck that to the lens board of my Arca Swiss and took some shots in the garden. The films drying now but I can already see that they're blurry photos which are massively overexposed :LOL: must have got something wrong with my calculations, not that im 100% sure how to calculate the exposure for an f/225 pinhole lens whilst taking Fomapans legendary reciprocity failure into consideration! I'll upload the end photos anyway so you can see how terrible they are :LOL: here's my camera and "lens" anyway

View attachment 35321 View attachment 35322
 
Don't forget world pinhole day is this Sunday, I might dig out the 4x5 for this.
 
I was just about to post pretty much the same "heads up" Nick... Time to give the Pinholga a bit of a clean/dust down and load some film in the damned thing...
 
@Carl Hall - Did you eventually post the results from the pinhole experiment ?? Can't recall seeing them (though I've not been around quite so much in the past couple of weeks...)
 
@Carl Hall - Did you eventually post the results from the pinhole experiment ?? Can't recall seeing them (though I've not been around quite so much in the past couple of weeks...)

Nope! The results were really, really poor but I'll post one up when I get home. Think my problem was that the card that I used was too thick, and the soft plastic didn't give me a decent round hole. A friend of mine is meant to be getting me a piece of .010-.020" thick ally from work for me to try and get a bit more accurate. Hopefully I'll be able to get this today and get some better shots by Sunday :)
 
I'm off to the lakes armed only with a XA so I'll have to try and knock something together on Sunday night and shoot it on the 54.
 
I quite like that, it has a look that is often lost with the good quality pinholes.
 
Ok so I've cut my can up into three squares and drilled holes in the centres. I scanned the pieces and measured them in photoshop with the intention of picking the roundest one for my pinhole. Turns out they're all pretty bad :LOL: Think I'm going to use numero 3. Its quite oval shaped compared to the others but it's a smoother shape. It's diameter is about .385mm which is about right for a 90mm lens according to Mr Pinhole. Now to stick it onto my camera and get out shooting :D

Pinholes.jpg
 
Also I've just scanned my "casino card" lens to try and find out why my photos were overexposed and the hole is oversized at .49mm. By my calculations that's f/183 for 90mm, which is half a stop faster than the f/225 I based my exposure on. I guess that's not enough of a difference to give me the over exposed photos I had, so I would assume either the Fomapan 100 reciprocity data that I found online was out, or I was a bit shoddy with my timings lol
 
3 looks the best but yeah without a laser I think it takes a lot of practice.

I think the standard foma reciprocity breaks down in very very long exposures, its a bit hit or miss once you get out of the standard range of exposures that its tested for.
 
3 looks the best but yeah without a laser I think it takes a lot of practice.

I think the standard foma reciprocity breaks down in very very long exposures, its a bit hit or miss once you get out of the standard range of exposures that its tested for.

I think I got my figures from another website, and I think a 7 second exposure was said to be 46 secs on Fomapan 100. Does that sound about right? If so then I think I have it roughly sorted, if I meter at f/16 and get 1/125 sec, that translates to approx 3.5 secs at f/234 (0.385mm hole at 90mm), which is 15 secs on Fomapan 100. 1/125 to 15 secs is a massive difference lol.
 
Made a couple of body cap pinhole lenses for my and my wife's Canons earlier this week. Used a very small drill bit and some thin sheet brass. Will be interesting to see how they work though it is more likely to be Saturday than Sunday we manage to get out.
 
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Okay folks - todays the day... time to get out there and start counting elephants....
Well i'm sorry to say that's there's nothing from me......two reasons, well OK "excuses" lol......had family visit so naturally "instant" digi results are their prefered option and today has seen some very strong winds as storms head into the region so long exposures mixed with pinhole was never going to equate to a reasonably sharp result with my holgawpc!

Well done to those who have perservered....i look forward to viewing more results.
 
A couple from me...


Giant Haystacks
by The Big Yin, on Flickr

no, not Shirley Crabtrees wrestling buddy, a Real Giant Haystack... Actually, this is just a small one, compared to the two down the lane from this shot, but they're in a much less accessible location, and surrounded by a bunch of farmers at the time of the pictures... Shows the problems of trying to actually frame something up with the WPC120 - the "guideline pegs" on the top of the camera are not too bad in terms of establishing left and right boundaries - but top and bottom of frame is a bit of a crapshoot...




Under the Rails
by The Big Yin, on Flickr

Shot on the Holga WPC120 using Ilford Delta 100 film, a red filter, and home developed in Kodak D-76, 1+1 11 minutes @ 20°c, Scan via Canoscan 8800F and a few gentle adjustments in CS5/lightroom 4.4. The "Under the Rails" shot was left in "colour" because... well... because I preferred it that way somehow. No artistic pretensions behind it, or any working towards a particular aesthetic. I just preferred it to the B&W shot.
 
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Love the pinhole look, must get/make one.

Well done folks, look forward to seeing more.
Right, off to google some more ..
 
Another "tweak" to the "under the rails" shot...

I've had a little more time and managed to (largely) get rid of the worst of the scratches on the neg at frame left... and, just for good measure, moved the colour balance more from "sepia" to a more selenium toned look...


Unde the Rails (2)
by The Big Yin, on Flickr

(exposure details... 28 elephants at f/135 due to the red filter)
 
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and a couple that took a little more "re-working" - I've had a bad case of "hoover bag" with the dust spots on this roll.


Delta100_2015-04-26_006-Edit.jpg
by The Big Yin, on Flickr

(A train did actually pass over this bit of track while I was shooting, however, it was "making good speed" and with another 28 elephant exposure, it didn't leave even a ghost of an image...)



Windy Lake
by The Big Yin, on Flickr

Plenty of movement in this one as well - plus for some reason there was a "hot spot" on the RH of frame that I've tried (pretty unsucessfully) to attack with the burn-tool - I'm thinking it was probably a raindrop on the red-filter doing some sort of prism thing...

Both home souped and scanned on the Canoscan 8800F with SilverfastSE 6.6, dust spotted and cropped a little in Lightroom and then passed over to CS5 for a touch of sharpening via a high-pass filter, and a gentle coat of faux-selenium toning using Silver Efex Pro.
 
nobody else then ??
I took a couple but the roll is still in the camera. Should get it finished this week with a bit of luck.
 
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I didn't have time in the end, it was after 6 before I got back from camping and I didn't have a slr with me to put a pinhole on.
 
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