PJWphoto » pinhole

Lost in the Pub

pjw — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:48:29 +0000

The other night I was at the pub with a couple of friends and happened to have a pinhole cameras in my pocket. Although it was quite dark, I set the camera on the table we were sitting at and left it exposing while we chatted and drank away. Around midnight we all went our separate ways but the camera stayed, forgotten on the table. The next day, after not finding the camera in my jacket pocket I realised it was still at the pub and went to try and get it back. Someone had put it behind the bar at some point and thankfully it had not been opened, but the shutter was still open! I covered the pinhole and after finishing the roll (only a couple of shots) dropped it off for processing.

image from a pinhole camera left on a pub table and collected the next day.

You can see the result above, the recorded experience of a camera lost in a pub for around 18 hours. The image is suitable confused, probably the result of it being picked up and moved throughout the day. I think it looks quite cool!

The film was an old roll of Kodak Gold 200 dated 06/2003 that’s been sitting in the camera for about 9 months so its pretty grainy and the colours are a bit funky. Without access to a negative scanner, I had to resort to photographing the negatives on a light box and adjust the images on the computer. Not ideal but it works well enough.

I’m thinking of doing this again (deliberately this time), but i don’t really want to lose the camera or spark some kind of security alert…although that could be fun too…..

Pinhole Array

pjw — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 14:38:12 +0000

Sine-Square Oscillator as seen through 24 pinholes.
8 min exposure under 500W tungsten lamp.
paper negative photographed and inverted in photoshop.

Letterbox Pinhole camera

pjw — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 18:33:30 +0000

So a thought occurred to me a few days ago…a camera obscura is usually built by placing a small aperture over a window and blocking out all other light. the result is an upside down and back to front view from the window,faintly projected onto the opposite wall.
On a bright day it can be very impressive once your eyes adjust, essentially the room is turned into a giant pinhole camera pointing out the window. so just like a pinhole camera you can cover the inside of it with photo paper and make paper negatives.

Buy hey, your window is made of glass for a reason, and your covering it over on a bright sunny day.

the view from my front door

So to get back to the point of this post: I thought,why not use the front door instead…its usually closed and you cant normally see through it apart from the peep hole and the letter box….

while the peep hole might be interesting for other projects (like a cheap fish eye lens), it occurred to me that the letter box is the perfect pinhole mount, it even has a shutter of sorts!

I blacked out all doorways, the windows above doors, and taped around the front door. then wedged open the letter box and covered it with a hole cut in a piece of mat board

3 sheets of 12×16 Ilford photo paper ( pre-flashed using a filtered vivitar 283 flash) stuck to the wall opposite the front door were exposed for about 2hr 40min

I hope to scan these soon, but for now here’s a digital photo of the negs, inverted in photoshop and overlayed on a photo taken out of the letterbox.

I am pretty happy with the result, its nearly life size but a bit fuzzy and faint. With a slightly smaller aperture and an even longer exposure (all day?) it could look really good.

I recently got a fresh pack of paper and plan to continue this project, hopefully ending up with a wall sized mural, using many different exposures. I also thought that it could be interesting to try using colour paper in a few places on top of the black and white.

keep and eye out for progress