Camera Obscura

Since Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day is coming up, I wanted to share a project I did with my photography class recently.  We built a camera obscura inspired by Abelardo Morell.

To set this up, we blocked all the windows in a room at the school, then positioned “pinholes” in a portion of the window.  These pinholes ranged from 1/2 to 1 inch in diameter and turned the entire room into a pinhole camera projection of what was outside.  Everything was backwards and upside down.  The students (and staff, parents and myself) had a blast standing in the room and watching cars, kids and everything else go by our little school.

Above is a long exposure photo of the back wall that shows what we were watching in the room.
Tips:
-The room doesn’t need to be 100% light tight.  Cover the windows most of the way, although the darker the better.
-Smaller pinholes create sharper projections, but are harder to see with the naked eye.  Larger pinholes create brighter projections, but are a little fuzzy.
-To take a picture of the inside of your camera obscura, point the camera at the wall opposite the window and use a longer exposure on a tripod.

Good luck with your life size pinhole projects!
-Kelly

World Pinhole Photography Day!

Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day is coming!  This worldwide event is held on the last Sunday in April each year.  This year’s WPPD is only 2 weeks away, on April 29th.  For the event, all you have to do is take a pinhole photo on April 29th and upload it to their website, http://www.pinholeday.org/.

For more info on the event and to see events you can attend, visit their website.
To learn how to make (or use) your own pinhole camera, read the Pinhole section of this blog.
Finally, I’m thinking about organizing a Pinhole event in Siskiyou County.  If you would be interested, please email me at klsphotosiskiyou@gmail.com for more information!
Happy Shooting!
-Kelly

Is that a camera?

Is it digital? Is that made by Fisher Price?  Wait, it shoots film?

Or my personal favorite…

What are you doing?

There is something special and fun about shooting toy cameras.  First, nobody gets them.  And the people who do, LOVE IT.  I’ve been working on a toy camera exclusive project and I’ve heard so many “OMG, is that a Diana?  Can I hold it.  I have to get one of these!” 

Or, there are the people who are around when I’m taking a pinhole photo that are generally confused (and a little nosy) and want to know what you’re doing – only to be confused further when you say, “I’m taking a picture.  That’s a camera.”  I know what they’re thinking… “that box/paint can/lifesavers tin/insert random object is a camera?  Okay, I’m just going to walk away slow.”

But my best advice is to take it all in stride.  Or educate people.  I found a lot of people were fairly astonished to know that I spent $70 on a multi-colored Holga.  “But, why, isn’t it just plastic?”  Well, yeah, but it’s the most amazing plastic I can possibly get my hands on.

I love it.  If you see me on the street with a toy camera, feel free to ask “Is that a camera?”  I’ll tell you all about it!

Kelly

Stereo Pinhole

Though not technically stereo, because it’s not lined up to shoot 3D, I did make a pinhole camera that has 2 holes… meaning 2 overlapping images.

You can start with almost anything that is light tight.  Paint can, wood box, old soda can, matchbox… or this lovely Life Savers tin we got for Christmas.

I started by using E6000 to glue a tripod nut onto the bottom.  If you haul your tripod into any hardware store and go to the loose nut aisle, they’ll help you find the right size.

I used a clear ruler to line up where I wanted the holes to be.

Then I drew it out and placed blue marks where each drill hole would go.

I made 2 matching pinholes, using this method, and taped them in.

Then made 2 shutters using the lining material from darkroom photo paper. 

Okay, this is the cutest camera ever.  Just sayin’.

I went outside with it and set it on the spare tire on the back of my Wrangler and took a shot using darkroom paper.  With this specific camera, it was about 20 seconds shooting into the setting sun.

Here’s my negative, straight out of the darkroom print lab.

And the corresponding positive after inverting it digitally.

The distortion with this camera is insane.  I have the paper curved all the way around the back so you can see in this shot some of the neatest things about pinholes.

1 – they are really wide angle.  In this shot you see both the tread from my tire and the trees above my car.

2 – infinite depth of field.  The tread is in focus.  The trees way off are in focus.

3 – If your camera has a curved back – such as with a paintcan – you get interesting distortion toward the edges.

Finally, With this particular camera, there is a double image.  You see the cars, tread, trees all appear twice, overlapping in the middle.

Are you doing this yet?  You should be doing this.  Pinhole is the camera at it’s most basic!  For more pinhole resources, please visit www.jamesgilmore.net – both his galleries of pinholes and his blog which links to more pinhole resources.

Shasta Betty

Large Format Pinholes

Can’t afford a Large Format Camera?  Me either.  Even if I had the $4000+ to get one of these (or the hundreds you would spend used), there are other things, such as lenses, I would spend it on first.

However, there is something kinda fantastic about a negative that is 4 inches wide and 5 inches tall.  Contact prints the size of snapshots, and you can enlarge the photos to… I don’t even know.  So if you really want one, but don’t want to pay for it, I suggest building (or buying) a 4x5 pinhole camera.  

If you have some basic carpentry skills, you can build one of these fairly easily.  It’s essentially a double thick box, constructed to be light tight, with a pinhole lens in the front. 

The film backs (which you can pick up on Ebay for a couple bucks each) are held tight to the back with mini bungee cords. The handle on top makes this thing easier to move around, plus it looks nice.  On the bottom, there is a tripod mount that is as simple as inserting the right sized nut or threading to fit a tripod.

 

 

 

Now, if you don’t have great carpentry skills (which I don’t), you can go my route and buy a box pinhole.  They vary in price range, and you may find yourself making some adjustments once it arrives, but it saves some time and makes it possible for people who don’t know what a circular saw is.  I found mine on Ebay, but try Etsy, Santa Barbara camera or just use Google.

I loved this camera, but when it showed up I noticed that the film holders had some room to slide around in the back, and I didn’t trust how light tight the system actually was, so I got out some plain black mounting board and made some additions.

This is a pretty good view of the inside, which I only modified in 2 places.  The black inner box of this camera is recessed from the wood, which is where the film holder sits.  I added a small strip to the bottom of the wood to make the film holder sit highhigher, and a strip at the top that matches the recessed part of the top of a film holder.  Film holders have a couple indentations and such that help hold them in place and serve as bevels to block out light.

To secure the film holder from the back, I added a flap.  I cut and glued strips of mount board so that the flap fits in the indentations of the film holder and around the edges, creating (hopefully) a better seal to keep extra light out.  It’s not the pretties thing ever, but I like having the extra security. 

All together, it looks like this:

 

Next, just load film and shoot.  There is no shutter and no lens cap.  To expose a sheet of film you have to remove the dark slide from the film holder.  I use my finger as a shutter, blocking the hole while I remove the dark slide, then put it back after the exposure to block the pinhole while I put the dark slide back.

Some helpful advice:

The dark slide tops are usually silver or white on one side and black on another.  This is so you can keep track of which holders are exposed or unexposed.  Most people use black for exposed film, but it’s really up to you.  Just make sure you remember which is which!  I know a lot of people who forget halfway through and then all your film is either double exposed, or not exposed at all.

It’s hard to know which was is up in the darkroom.  4x5 sheet film needs to be loaded in complete darkness, so you can’t see which side the emulsion is on.  If you always load film so that the notches are on the upper right, then you’ll be ok.

Finally, the size of your pinhole, the focal length and the light in a photo will all determine your exposure length. 

Here’s my one successful example (I forgot which color meant exposed).  It’s a double exposure of a creek at COS and the grass in my front yard.

Hope someone has fun with this project.  Let me know if you try it!

Update for some hardcore DIY-ers:  This article gives a pretty good run down of how to construct one of these from scratch.  It uses foam board instead of wood, but it’s a great jumping off point.  There are also some helpful links for calculating optimum focal length if you look in the comments.

Matchbox Pinhole

So, it’s fairly easy to build a pinhole camera that can shoot sheet film or photo paper, but this camera is made for a roll of 35mm film and just requires a pinhole, a matchbox, an extra film canister and a lot of black electrical tape.

  

So, first take out the inner tray and cut a hole in matchbox, this is where your pinhole will go.  Tape that thing in, then tape the entire box outside to help with it’s light-tight-ness.

Cut a hole in the matchbox tray.  This will be your photo frame (how much of the film is exposed at a time).  With this, whatever shape you cut will be the shape of your pictures.  The photos will even have interesting edges depending on how precisely you cut.  In theory, you could make heart shaped photos.

Next, pull out a couple inches of the film you’re shooting and run it behind the tray, but inside the matchbox.  This is how that frame you cut comes into play.  Then you’ll be taping your film onto the remainder of film in your spare film spool, which will be your take-up mechanism when shooting.

Now, tape the heck outta everything.  Use another piece of tape as a shutter over your pinhole.

To wind film, I attached a sawed off key on the take-up spool.  It’s about one turn of the spool for each frame.

Finally, I used hot glue to attach a nut which can screw onto a tripod.  I glued it to the side so that I could set the camera down and shoot on a flat surface instead of gluing it directly to the bottom.

 

Then shoot away.  A well lit exposure on 400 speed film is around 1-3 seconds – so you need a steady surface. (Your exposure will also depend on the pinhole you make/buy!)

I developed a couple rolls of this and had photos that turned out, although I didn’t think they were very interesting except in the method I used.  This is a good reminder to still think about your subject!  Just using a weird camera won’t always make for a picture you love. 

This picture I think is fun, and it shows how much detail the film picks up from the jaggedly cut film frame.  It also has almost a fisheye effect either from the pinhole I made or the fact that I shot expired film.  I can’t explain the distortion, but I would love to keep experimenting to figure it out.

Remember, if you try any of this stuff, post it in the comments or email me!  I’d love to share reader’s experience on this blog as well.

Paint can Pinhole

I originally wanted to wait for this post so that I had a larger set of examples to share of what this “camera” can do, but after an interesting test at COS today, I think it’s too cool to wait.

As discussed earlier this week, you can make a pinhole camera out of just about anything that is light tight and can hold film/paper/etc – like I did with the body cap to my DSLR.  One of the most widely used versions of this is putting a pinhole into a paint can.  Most of them are matte gray or black on the inside, light tight, and the curved back provides interesting wide angles and distortion.

To make a paint can pinhole, simple drill a hole into the side of the can, tape in a brass shim pinhole and make a shutter out of something (I used the black plastic that holds darkroom printing paper and duct tape).  Simply load the camera with film or paper in an appropriate light free or safety lit environment and shoot.  The results will be a negative image that is upside down and backwards.

 

Here’s an example of a negative print and it’s corresponding positive:

 

However, another classmate and I played with putting color printing film into our paint cans and ended up with really amazing negatives (which I converted digitally to a positive because I was curious).

Negative

Positive

  

The sky should be blue and the trees green, but instead the camera created this interested color scheme.  I love it and plan to do a lot more in the future.  Look for updates!

Things that have pinholes already in them and a Holga update

While you can build pinhole cameras using a variety of mediums (more on that in the future), you can also buy cameras that are already premade pinhole cameras or cameras that convert to pinholes.  For example, there is a way to break a Holga to make it a pinhole.  Also, if you buy a Diana F+, it has a pinhole setting and removable lens for genuine pinhole photos.

There are a lot of ways of recording pinhole photos, ranging from 35mm film to photographic paper.  The Diana records images on 120 (medium format) film.  Another fun thing about using the Diana to record pinhole photos, is that you can change the aperture setting, replace the lens and continue to take regular pictures.

As with any Diana shot, there is room for multiple exposures.  Pinholes also allow for long exposures during daylight, which can be interesting as well.  These are a couple prints I got off my first roll of film.  Some advice from experience: pay attention to whether or not you advanced the film after each photo!  I ended up with a lot of double exposures that weren’t intentional (although some I loved anyway, which is what makes Lomography so interesting at times).

Double exposure pinhole

 

A little motion blur…

Because of the longer exposure and my puppy’s movement, her head and tail are ghosted out of the photo.

  

Also, as promised, I have a couple new B&W photos from my Holga.  Even if you’re not doing all the off the wall things I want to try with this blog, I hope these at least encourage or inspire you to spend $20 and take some interesting photos.