Pinhole photography, Part III

For those of you who have been living under a rock and don't know what StumbleUpon is, it's a tool to help you discover websites you might like, based on the interests you specify and which websites you give thumbs up or thumbs down. It's something I turn to when I'm bored because I know I'm bound to come across something interesting. Stumbling across this website is what got me thinking about pinhole photography recently.

Photographer Justin Quinnell took a series of pinhole photos, including the one below.

What is so cool about this photo is that it was taken over a period of six months! Not multiple exposures, but one single shot!

Pinhole photography, part II

The first camera I made turned out to be the best. I used a shoebox that was large enough to fit a whole piece of 8.5 x 11" paper inside. For the aperture I cut 1" x 1" squares out of aluminum cans, made a tiny hole in the center with the tip of a sewing needle, and used sandpaper to smooth the hole. Since the box was so large I put 3 apertures on my camera (horizontally across the lid).

Remember that unlike the paper you stick in your printer to print your digital photos, this type of photo paper must not be exposed to light except when taking your photo! Loading the camera meant going into the darkroom, applying tape onto the back side of the photo paper so that it could stick to the inside of the shoe box (opposite the lid), and putting the lid back on. I had to seal the box very well to prevent light leakage using black electrical tape. Then I used the back tape to make 3 "lens caps" for the apertures on the front of the box.

Here is a sketch I did of my setup. Sorry about the quality, it was my first time using google sketchup.

To take a photo I would then go to my location (close to darkroom since I had to repeat the process for each photo) and steady the camera. With my subject matter in front of the camera I would peel the black tape off of the holes and count in my head a certain number of seconds depending on how sunny it was outside. It was more or less a guessing game. I think I found that 10 seconds or so was enough time for a sunny day. After I was done taking the photo I would cover the apertures again, return to the dark room, remove all of the tape, and put the photo paper in the chemicals to develop and make my negative. Then I took my negative (the original sheet of photo paper that came from inside my camera) over to the enlarger and used a new sheet of photo paper to make my positive.

Later I experimented with other pinhole camera designs, but none were as good as the first. The second best was a camera I made out of the small box my film came in where I could manually wind film through so that after taking a photo I would wind approximately 2" of film from one reel to the other and could then take another photo. I worked really hard on this design since it meant I could take 15 to 20 photos before I had to return to the darkroom. Unfortunately, it seemed like no matter how much black tape I used some light always seemed to find a way in. Also, my high tech winding mechanism (a paper clip taped to the film canister) broke a few times and occasionally the film would break off of the reel which required me to remove all the tape and go back into the darkroom to fix it. It was a total headache!

Here's what my camera looked like as it was being assembled

Here is a photo of someone else's camera to give you an idea for how the finished product looked.

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An example of how the film would look after developing.

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And for more fun... Check out cool pinhole photos people have uploaded to flickr.

Pinhole photography

Ever since I was a little girl I've enjoyed photography. Even though I use digital now, I grew up with film and learned how to develop and process my own photos in the darkroom. In both high school and college I enrolled in photography classes as an escape from all the science and math classes I was taking. Not that I don't like those subjects, but I think it's good to be well rounded.

One of the assignments we were given in our undergraduate photography class was to take photos using homemade pinhole cameras. It was a lot of fun to do and I was really impressed with how the photos turned out. It's so simple to do (assuming you have easy access to a darkroom) - all you need is a box or something that can be sealed shut to serve as the camera body, a small piece of aluminum (from a soda can) with a tiny needle sized hole for your lens, black electrical tape to seal your box closed and prevent light from getting in, and a piece of photo paper, which you can cut down to whatever size you need.

I recently scanned in some of my photos and thought I'd share them. Our scanner is a bit old and dirty so the quality here is a bit reduced. The first three were taken with a camera that had 3 apertures which is why the subject repeats.

The last two photographs are not pinhole photos. I made them by laying the lightbulb (or in the case of the photo on the right, the broken glass pieces) directly on the photo paper under the enlarger and exposing the paper for a few seconds.

Stay tuned for more on how I made my cameras later in the week!