Today I received via email, the results from the seven cameras I sent to Tarja a week ago.
The three I did myself were dismal failures, I forgot the paper in two of them and the third had a water leak. The four Tarja supplied worked great as usual.
For further info : Solargraphy Website in Finland
The 2nd image below is a normal 50mm shot of the same view of the second shot by the pinhole camera. The pinhole obviously has a much wider field of view.
Below is a picture of the lenses I currently (June 2009) am playing with:
This is a listing with the lens descriptions. The top two are the aperture blanks. The others are numbered from the top left to the bottom right.
Here is my entry taken on April 26, 2009. Canon XTi
If you see another number photo than 789 come up try refreshing. There are three photos named Playground and it seems to be occasionally causing the wrong one to appear.
Playground
April 26, 2009
Blow the dust off your old pinhole camera, buy one, borrow one, build one. Time is running short.
The pinhole is mounted in the M42 lens body to be used via an M42 to EOS adapter on my Canon XTi. There is about 20mm of focus movement available. A few test shots with ASA 1600 and a rainy day indicate that the focus range looks good. The proof will come when we get some Sun.
This again, is for the upcoming Pinhole Day 2009 on April 26, 2009.
CLICK HERE FOR FURTHER ADAPTER INFORMATION ON MY BLOG
CLICK HERE FOR FURTHER PINHOLE INFORMATION ON MY BLOG
It took longer than anticipated due to my midstream change to using a bellows for future mounting of old lenses to my Canon XTi.
The original method I was using involved purchasing an old lens, then removing all the optics, then getting the focal length set correctly, then taking the optics out of the old lens, and mounting the old optics. This was very time consuming.
Now I have a M42 screw type bellows mounted to the XTi via a focus confirming adapter (soon to be replaced with one of the new custom settings version). Then all that is needed is to directly glue the lens to an M42 screw type macro tube. Then screw on the lens to the bellows and shoot. Much easier and cheaper. As a bonus the lens is not harmed except for the glue used in the mounting.
Today I have finished the old M42 135mm mount for the pinhole project. All that is left is a quick visit to Mr Pinhole’s Website to get the dimension for the pinhole itself and then just get it mounted to try it out. I hope to be able to use this for Pinhole Day 2009.
Photos will follow when the Sun comes out (sometime in June I believe).
Tomorrow, March 20, 2009 at 11:44AM (UTC) is the Vernal Equinox.
Today I put four pinhole cameras in place around my house to record from tomorrow through the June 21. 2009 Summer Solstice. The cameras were sent to me, free of any charge by Tarja Trygg. After I take them down, I will send them back to her for processing. I did some for her last Fall through Winter and one is posted on her website.
Solargraphy Website in Finland
Tarja welcomes people to share in this endeavor no matter where in the world they reside. The only cost to you is the return postage to Finland for the cameras. It was less than $2.00 USD for me in January.
This is the image taken from my backyard that is on the Solargraphy website.
CLICK HERE FOR FURTHER ADAPTER INFORMATION ON MY BLOG
Since I have been ‘collecting’ quite a few M42 135mm lenses to use as ‘host bodies’ with the various old Kodak lenses, I find myself with an ‘extra’. I am going to put a pinhole holder inside on the helical focusing section. This will allow me to easily use various size pinholes at different focal lengths with my Canon XTi. The dismal body cap pinhole images I have gotten after several tries at pinhole sizing are making me rethink how best to use a DSLR and a pinhole. I am going to make sure that I use the RAW format in an attempt to circumvent the JPG software gremlin inside.
The very best images from any of my pinhole cameras come from the Yashica A conversion. I am fairly sure this is due to the twin lens system it has. I am able to focus and frame the shot with the top lens. I feel that since both lenses move on the same platform and both lenses are very close to the same distance from the film plane, that the focus does actually work. Using this premise, I will build the above mentioned lens for use on the DSLR’s.
With the upcoming Pinhole Day 2009 on April 26, 2009, I have a month to build and experiment with the concept. How to make the changeable holder for the pinholes seems to be the toughest part of the project.
This pinhole project and putting the Kodak Bimat lens in a 135mm host body are on the ‘to do’ list today.
Pinhole Day 2009 is coming soon. On April 26, 2009 thousands of pinholes will be used to capture images from all over the world and then uploaded to the main website. Visit the website and see the entries from years past. Everything from matchboxes using film to super high tech digital cameras are used. Certainly you can get something to use in the next two months (from this posting date).
Up front, let me say I that I do not like Photoshop. People take pictures that look exactly the way the scene was in real life and then screw them up to satisfy friends, judges, and whoever else’s idea of what it should have looked like. Heavy contrast, blown out gamma, frizzy super sharpening, color curves all askew, exposures ‘adjusted’, etc. And that is not even mentioning the horrors of HDR!
Anyways, this is to let you know that I am a hacker with photoshop – crop, brightness, contrast is about all I do. So, when I started to do some of my own Solargraph images, I was perfect for the job. No preconceptions to stop me from blundering all over.
The ‘recipe’ I do is fairly simple (and I am sure many people do it many ways) is to first make sure my scanner will take the whole image in one pass without the lamp stopping while the software catches up – this causes bars of overexposed image where the lamp pauses. I use a piece of paper as a test. Some scanners, like mine, will not work correctly unless the preview finds a contrasting section from its own background to use as an edge. By adjusting the scanned DPI you can arrive at the best resolution that gives a single continuous pass.
Then remove the paper quickly from your camera, don’t pause, pass go or take a look, slap it in the pre-warmed scanner, put the cover down and quickly scan the paper. OK, so you looked, there was nothing on the paper, so you took it to the window to look closer, maybe help it up to a light fixture for good measure. Too bad you did that, the image is probably there, just too faint for the human eye to see it. The scanner will however. So put it in anyway and remember the next time not to peek.
The scanned image will look like it is blank with perhaps a few squiggly lines here and there. Don’t panic – yet. This is a negative image. Don’t blow your mind here- accept it. Put the image in Photoshop or a clone thereof, invert the image and play with the exposure and contrast. (You will notice an abundance of technical details here). If there is anything that looks like what you were hoping for then just keep at it. I’ve had to occasionally solarize, convert to mono, convert to B&W (NOT all at once !) depending on the length of the exposure and the paper itself. If the colors are whacko thats the way it happens -accept it, if you can’t live with them, change it to mono or B&W. I have good luck with using a B&W Photoshop add on filter with the red filter option checked.
If there is nothing there and you in fact had the pinhole open, the paper facing the right way, no light leaks in the camera, or other not so obvious things (perhaps someone moved it for a few days and then put it back facing another direction) then accept that it just didn’t work. I have found, after all else failed, that the paper I was using doesn’t work for solargraphy. I have no idea why, it just didn’t – time after time. I then changed to an old outdated Kodak B&W paper and it started working for me. Also, Ilford works well. The paper has to be true B&W photographic paper- the type used in a darkroom and processed with chemicals. Not color paper that was designed for B&W images and certainly not ink jet paper.
Remember, you are using a lensless camera with photographic paper that was not designed to be used this way. Some experimentation will probably be needed.
Have fun, I am.
