Pinhole camera 1982 Queen St. E.

Photo taken with a home made (obviously leaky) cardboard and soup can

pinhole camera using a paper negative. Thanks for any constructive

comments or suggestions.

Constructive part: The biggest worm which is hanged in the top part of this hole is little distracting, can't help nothing to the fact that my eyes goes there all the time. Also the composition of this hole could be little more towards the right top corner. But i guess these things are also those for which you can't do anything anymore.

The Praise part: The pic i see though the hole looks great in my eyes, i wouldn't do nothing to it. More grain, the better it will get.

Ps. Guess you don't have a pic for us of this widget you used to shoot this pic.

Thanks for the comment. I could most likely clone out that big worm but I kind of like it :)

 

The grain is from using photo paper for the negative instead of film. Contact printing the paper negative to get a positive increases the grain even more.

 

I will look around in my negative files from around that time, I may have a photo of the camera I made.

 

BTW if you like grain take a look at my Plumes shot in my old time folder.

Gordon,

 

I feel like your images tell so many stories. This one is no different. Sometimes I wonder how much of what you shoot is inspired by what you feel that particular day...:)

I haven't seen very many shots done like this (with the widget as Tero said), but it is fascinating how it's done. What a big difference it makes in the mood of the scene. I enjoy looking at this.

Gordon, I know from experience how difficult this is. I have to say I'm really impressed. It's a fabulous one.

Gord, I don't recall really seeing how a photo comes out from a pinhole camera .... so it is a nice experience for me. I like the dark frame( what probably is the edges of the pinhole? and I like the atmospher and monochromatic tone. Tt will be nice if you will find the photo that shows how it looks and explain to layman like me how it is really works. Thanks

Pnina, before Gordon gives you a lengthy and most probably erudite reply maybe I can help you a bit. At the acadamy we had to built our own one (still got four of them). The first I built from wood took old radiology film cassettes of 8x10 inch. I had one of the hospital technicians make me a hole in a sheet of plate copper (o,2 mm thick), there are formulas to calculate the right diameter, if I remember correctly it was 0,7 mm. Since he was an expert in fine mechanics he drilled me a perfet one. It got a diapraghm of 360 ! But it's easy to experiment. Although I never did it on a digital camera (this thread is giving me an idea though) we once removed the lens of our camera, put aluminiom foil in front of the opening and punctured this a few times with a needle. That proved to be enough to get acceptable pinhole photo's.

 

Sorry Gordon if I spoke out of turn under your photo

Diana;

 

As I suppose is the case with many people, I am a person of many moods from day to day and yes those moods do wind up reflected in my photos. Thanks for the comment.

 

Liz;

 

I must admit that looking through a stack of these old pinhole shots from years ago has got me thinking about doing some new pinhole shots.

 

Ton;

 

It is not so much difficult as it is time consuming and unpredictable. At least that is how it has been for me.

 

Pnina;

 

I have looked, but so far, I have had no success finding a photo of this home made camera. I am not even certain a photo of it exists. I will try to do my best to describe it. Basically you need to make a box on which to attached a sheet of metal with a very small hole and onto which you can attach a piece of film on the other end. You cover the hole with black tape and/or protect the film until you wish to take a photo. You then remove the tape to open the lens hole and do your exposure.

 

For mine I used the flat black cardboard which Kodak sheet film used to be packaged in and built a box with some tape and glue. I used the sheet film holder for a 4 X 5 view camera taped onto the back of the box. For a lens I used the metal bottom of a soup can. I sanded the metal until it was very, very thin in the centre and then I made a small hole with a sewing needle. I hope that explanation is helpful. If I do find a photo I will post it.

 

Ton;

 

By all means feel free to speak your mind and offer help any time you wish. I will always be thankful.

 

Speaking of digital I have been reading up on using the body cap on my 20D to make a pinhole lens to do digital pinhole. I have even heard of mounting a small piece of abs pipe to the lens cap and making a sliding pinhole sort of like a zoom pinhole lens to get different focal lens. I had a bunch of links to info on pinholes but a few weeks back all my Mozilla bookmarks suddenly vanished. If you are interested I can forward some links after I redo my research. One good source of info was a guy called Beepy Something-or-another who has a membership at PN.

 

Often these alternate ways of capturing images can be a lot of fun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, you all have covered the technical aspect very well, and I wouldn't know a pinhole camera from a Polaroid Land camera, Doesn't make much difference to me, as I'll never even master my damn D200. But about this image, if I may, it gives off such a sense of memories. Memories true or imagined. Have you ever looked back and wondered if something you did was real? I have had a number of experiences in my life, such as living in Colombia for a couple of years, running the Boston Marathon, etc. and many much more mundane. And sometimes, even though you know they have to be true, because you have evidence, you (meaning one) wonder if it wasn't just a dream. That is so how this image makes me feel. It is a depiction of that questioning of reality. And all the worms, and irregular edges are just what one would expect with that frame of mine. Boy, that was probably one rambling piece of idiocy, but I'll hope it makes some sense to you. Anybody under thirty, surely will think I'm nuts.

Thank you both for taking the time, I try to visualise how it functions in reality....I really would like to SEE one of them that you have Ton, as you have 4 of them... I will ask you to photo it , if you can, and let me see it, it will be nice.

This is great Gordon - did you use a paper negative or a hand applied emulsion to get this effect? The image has the look of a Calotype. The idea of Digital pinhole is just to much fun to ignore. Thanks for posting this one!!!

Pnina: Here's a link to some Pinhole information - A UCSC extension photography course taught by Martha Casanave and Chris Patton - http://pinhole.stanford.edu/

Note: Cyanotype is discussed at the end of this article - do not mess around with chemistry unless you have the proper equipment which includes an industrial quality gas mask. These processes are highly toxic and should never be used around children.

Gordon, thanks, good links are always usefull. Fun part is thet pinhole photography was mandatory and I really didn't want to but was forced nevertheless. Now I'm glad of it because it was only then that I really understood what light is and does. Your right, it's time consuming and unpredictable but fun nevertheless. After developing the negative I usually made a cyaonotype of it (at least the 8x10 inch ones) wich made the end result even more unpredictable.

Thanks. I wrote you at your files, I enjoyed the link, but I still want to see what Ton have ....;-))

Gordon, with the previous images, I can't help but wonder if this is a picture your fish took from inside its aquarium near your living room window. Like a fishes view of our world after showing us your view of the fishes world.

Very interesting. In high school, sometime late 70's, one of our teachers had us make pinhole cameras; forgot what they looked like.

 

Kirk

David;

 

I found your comment neither rambling nor idiotic, and believe me when I say that I know idiotic when I see it.To me, the light leakage around the border gives the effect of looking through some kind of portal to the place in my mind were this memory is stored.

 

Oddly I have been giving myself a bout of the same sort of thing you describe, by digging around in boxes of old prints and negatives from the 70s & 80s. I know I lived in this apartment and took this photo but it was long ago and when I reflect back it is as if I am recalling someone else's life. I know that I bummed around Europe the year before this picture was made. When I look at those images it seems somehow unreal that I wandered around all that time living out of a knapsack while dragging around a medium format and a 35 mm camera ,lenses, a tripod and piles of rolls of B&W and slide film. Memory is a strange faculty, I know there is a chronology and that I own my own story but often my memories seem to lack any cohesive and ordered relationship to each other and they often feel borrowed more than owned. Well... how's that for rambling :)

 

John;

 

I'm glad you like this. I was inspired to dig about in my cupboards after looking at your recent postings from the same approx. time period . Good guess, I did use a paper negative in a 4X5 film holder and then I contact printed it under a sheet of glass in the darkroom. I did this a lot back then, as I liked the effect of that would come through from exposing through the fibre of the paper. It is distinctly different from film grain. The toning I did in Lightroom after I scanned the print.

 

Ton;

 

When I studied photography, my teachers made me do all sort of projects which I did not want to do, yet I also learnt much from those assignments. Making a pinhole camera was not one of them however. We did read about them which inspired me to experiment on my own. I will send you some links via email at a later time.

 

Kirk;

 

I am quite happy to give the fish credit for this one :) It looks like somebody needs to clean the glass on the tank though.

Despite having a box of paper and film negatives from this camera I am having a helluva time closing my eyes and picturing the actual camera I built. I know what I made it from but I have no strong mental image of the device. The fact you cannot remember yours makes me feel a bit better.

the easiest technique they taught us, although I never tried it myself, was to put a single 35 mm negative in a darkened matchbox. I've seen pinhole prints on very large cibachrome from in a museum from two women from Brussels who converted their caravan into a pinhole camera. They were fabulous.

I like everything about this shot, i would change nothing. Well done. :)

What amazing invention, amazing.

I really like all the detritus on the edges of the frame and the grain and sepia tone. All together it creates such an atmosphere.

 

There are a number of personal things that intrigue me about this image:

 

1. This is the summer just before I was born in November. It is very interesting to see a familiar locale from that time.

 

2. Any chance you know what street corner on Queen this is?

 

3. I am confused by the light. It looks like I'm looking from the south side of Queen St onto the businesses of the North side of Queen St. But, the cars are all the wrong way around! Is this flipped horizontally by the process or something?

 

If it is flipped horizontally, than I think this is just east of Jones as I recognize the building with the bay-windows and recessed doorway.

 

Anyways, thanks for the fun! I have a pinhole lens cap to try with my dslr when I have some time. But, now I feel like I should be making my own soup can camera!

 

 

 

Ton;

 

Cibachromes using a van as the camera sound amazing. I once heard of a guy who used a room in his house. He painted the walls and windows all black except for a small hole and put the film on the wall. Of course he had to keep taking photos of the same scene but that was part of the charm of the idea.

 

Shayne;

 

Nice to hear from you. These were fun experiments. I am glad you like the photo.

 

Ian;

 

The image is flipped, for reasons I am not sure I can explain, the image looks better to my eye with the hydro pole on the left side. So yes this is shot from the south side of the street. I lived in a funky old apt. on the second floor of this building with a white picket fence, for somewhere around a year. It was 2456 Queen St. E. if memory serves. Scarborough road was the closest North South running intersection on the North side of Queen.

Fitzgerald's pubs was on that corner. The Fox Revue movie theatre was just down the road and the boardwalk was 2 minutes south of my building. Jones ran north off Queen someplace West of the racetrack if I remember correctly.

digged up some 8x10 inch negatives and the homemade pinhole camera that goes with it. As soon as I get your e-mail adress I'll send the images over Gordon. Pnina, they are already in your postbox.

Thanks for taking the time. I look forward to seeing your 8X10 pinhole camera and negatives.

Like David, my first thought was that this image is a memory, one shelved in a vault in your head. Like memory, there are portions of it that are crisp and accurate, while other portions are blurred and overtaken by decay. The shadows and "worms" arcing feel like the psychological experience of memory being overrun. You're so lucky to have had the foresight to save your earliest photographic endeavors.

 

 

I like this photo. Although an everyday scene, it feels important and relevant. It feels like a place that most people have been to and have access to in some form or fashion in their heads. I particularly like the powerline or telephone line pulling back into earth. It encapsulates the affective quality of the picture.

I just came back to this because of Jeff's comment, and I am still amazed that every time I open it, a flood of old memories just rush by. Part of the time I actually see the street scene from my second story bedroom in my childhood home. This thing has some power over me. Perhaps it is a substitute for the memories I did not preserve in some tangible form as you did. It really does resonate with me more and more.

Gordon, thanks for the details. For what it is worth, I distinctly prefer it flipped this way as well.