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Camera obscura


gene m

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Nicely done, Gene. We get to see many interesting views of your neck of the woods through your shared photos here. By now I know it's a beautiful area. It's always a pleasure.

 

Could you provide some details of the camera? Especially how you made the actual pinhole. These are surprisingly sharp.

 

Thanks again!

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Hey Dean

 

After making tons of pinholes and never really being happy with them I bought a laser cut pinhole for $18. The pinhole is by far the most important part of the camera. Crummy pinhole = "unsharp" photos.

 

 

I've got a number of old 120 cameras that I've converted to pinholes, I simply tape the pinhole over the hole left by the old lens. A tripod and a cable release and you're done.

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That's a good point about the variable exposure in the frame. It kind of makes sense that the light is spread out more toward the edges of the frame when you have a flat film plane. Pinhole shots made with a curved film plane don't show the distortion of the flat plane shots, and I'll bet there is less vignetting as well. On the other hand, optics and physics are rather a challenge for me. Maybe someone more scientifically inclined will spell it out for us in detail.
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Cool stuff, Gene. I recently made a pinhole body cap for my Spotmatic -- gives me 45 mm focal length at f/128, which means with Tri-X at EI 1600 (in Diafine) I can hand hold in sunny or hazy light. In fact, since my hold only needs to be better than the inherent level of blur from the pinhole, I found I can get good results almost every time down to 1/4 second, hand held. Sometime soon, though, I need to try it with color film.

 

BTW, I made my own pinhole -- seems fine, 0.013" average diameter (slightly out of round, but the next one will be better), which is a smidge bigger than optimal, but a full stop faster than the "optimum" hole for this distance. And since I did it all myself, it cost me zilch (well, if I don't count $5 for a roll of black masking tape that I bought for another project).<div>00B3TE-21754584.jpg.48265b7f17bcefcf78d8b813691edc63.jpg</div>

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