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.
This last week I climbed up on the roof, the satellite dish post and the front porch to remove seven pinhole cameras. As I took them down, I took a picture of where each was aimed. These images give Tarja a reference as to what the image should look like while she does her imaging magic.
The cameras referred to above are simply 35mm canisters with a hole drilled in the side, a pinhole lens taped over the hole and a piece of B&W photographic paper inside the canister. You place the camera facing the Sun’s path and put it securely in place.
These were in place from the Vernal Equinox to the Summer Solstice. With luck, they will show the varying path the Sun takes through the sky as the seasons change. The magic is – when you remove the paper from the camera there is a pseudo color image already on the paper without any development.
Since the image will very quickly disappear in normal light, I don’t play with them myself, I send them to Tarja who has more experience with Solargraphy than anyone else I know about.
She sends you back the images and you pick one from the batch to be posted on her website. She will send the cameras to you free of charge. You put it up, take it down and mail it back. It cost about $5.00USD this last time for the postage. All in all, a very cheap investment in both a scientific endeavor and photographic experiment.
http://www.solargraphy.com/
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.
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.
This one is from the cardboard cocoa can pinhole camera over a 4 day period. As a matter of interest, I have been using Ilford Multigrade IV RC DeLuxe Satin 5×7 inch paper. I am happy with this particular paper. I have had no success with my popcorn can pinhole camera with another brand 8×10″ B&W paper. I am going to re-load the popcorn camera tonight with another brand and see if it works better.
Today I received an email from Tarja with the four images taken at my house between 11-22-08 and 12-28-08. The fourth image does not have any Sun trails, however, when I re-do the four shots from Spring to Mid-Summer I am sure there will be.
For further information regarding Solargraphy: Solargraphy
The orientations for the four cameras are – 1- South 2-South West 3-West 4-North West
Click on the images for the full size version.
Notice the ghost images of the vehicles in the driveway in the second and third images. Remember that these images were made on B&W photographic paper with pinhole cameras made from 35mm film canisters over a five week time period. The colors are not Photoshop trickery, they actually appear on the paper.
I have made a page for solargraphic images.
Footnote: I have awarded myself the “Consistency Award for 2008″. As I noted in prior posts, I loaded some of my own pinhole cameras the day I took down Tarja’s cameras. Well, I just opened three of them, and in each and every case, I had put the paper in backwards. Now I have to go back and verify Tarja’s four, the three of my own and re-load the two large cans. I wonder where I should display my award – perhaps mounted on the wall – facing the wrong way?
Along with doing the solargraphy canister loading and re-loading, I also put B&W paper in the popcorn can camera (8×10) and the cocoa can camera (5×7). I have placed them inside the house, facing out of two windows. This is an experiment to see how an image looks without the Sun’s path being evident. What started this was a thought that I had regarding the ‘color’ that manifests itself on the B&W paper after prolonged exposure in a pinhole camera. Basically, are the UV, IR, and all the other wavelengths emanating from the Sun necessary for the colors to appear? I faced one camera NW and the other NxNW to cut down on direct rays from the Sun reaching the pinhole. Further, our replacement windows are untinted, double pane UV resistant coated. I will leave the cameras in place for at least a week before I try opening them.
Above is an example of a Solargraphy photograph showing the Sun’s path over a long period of exposure.
Yesterday I took down the four 35mm canister pinhole cameras that Tarja sent to me from Finland, removed the exposed B&W paper, and reloaded the canisters along with the six cameras I made for myself. Then I placed my own cameras outside in different places to experiment with a one week exposure period. Her reloaded cameras are going to Cancun, Mexico with me in early February; hopefully they will make the trip both ways without customs opening them. Actually, I think I will take a lightproof envelope with me with extra paper as a backup.
The cameras were in place from November 22 to December 28, 2009.
Today I mailed the four photographic papers to Tarja along with a CD with the digital pictures of the mounting of the four cameras and a ‘normal’ view of the pinhole camera’s FOV to facilitate her developing of the images.
I am looking forward to hearing from Tarja as to whether or not I was successful.
Background:
Tarja is looking for ‘can assistants’ from anyplace in the world. She will send you, free of charge, pre-loaded canisters. You simply place them securely facing the Sun’s path in the sky, wait from a week to six months, remove them and send them back (the only expense to you). She will ‘develop’ the images and email them back to you.
The ‘film’ is B&W photographic paper. There is a certain ‘magic’ here. After a long exposure to light in a pinhole camera, an image in pseudo color appears on the paper. Tarja scans this image and manipulates it. The result is such as is seen above.
See the following website for information. This has been a fun, very inexpensive (~$5USD in postage) and painless project.
Tarja Trygg
Licentiate of Art
University of Art and Design Helsinki TAIK
School of Art Education
Hämeentie 135 C, 00560 Helsinki
I used one of those huge metal popcorn cans that appear out of nowhere during the holidays as a pinhole camera to use 8×10 and 10×14 inch photographic paper. It is about 10.5 inches high and 8 inch diameter.
Simply clean the residual grease and gunk (pophuskus greasis) from the inside of the can and lid, paint both flat black inside (ouside is optional) after drilling a hole 1/2 way up from the bottom for the pinhole to show through.
Add a pinhole per directions in other posts on this blog.
Enjoy!
The dimensions from one website are as follows (remember to look at my disclaimer at the bottom right side of this page)
FL 240mm
Pin hole diameter .649mm – #72 drill
F stop 370
ASA 6
AOV 80.5 degrees with 8×10 paper
Sunny exposure 90 sec.
Now all I need is a sunny day, yeah, right, in upstate NY ? Maybe in June.
I got a good deal on some outdated B&W photographic paper (out of date by years – sized 5×7 and 8×10), so I have been making two pinhole cameras from metal cans. One takes up to 7″ paper, the other 10″ without trimming.
Nothing special at all – just painted inside and out with semi gloss black paint and then a second coat of flat black paint on the insides. I used the calculator on mrpinhole.com for the pinhole dimension that matches the diagonal of the paper and the diameter of the can the closest for the best focus. It appears the exposure times will be ~60 seconds for the 5×7 and ~90 seconds for the 8×10 on sunny days. Also, I’ll be able to try some solargraphy with them.
Anyway, I figured out a way to blacken out the area around a pinhole to cut down on reflective glare within a camera. The problem with black marker is it is not thick enough to do the job without several coats. Black paint will find a way to enter the pinhole, making it very,very hard to remove it without making the pinhole larger and deformed.
The method I discovered is very simple.
1) Put a roll of black electricians tape in a freezer.
2)Wait a couple of hours to make sure it is as cold as it will get.
3)Immediately drill a small hole through the tape roll (I used a 3/32″ drill, if I need more, I will use a 1/16″ drill) into and through the paper roll. Don’t press too hard as it will heat up the drill and tape, it took about 5 seconds to drill through each time with a brand new drill bit. Two or three evenly spaced holes around the diameter should do the job well, giving you a lot of masks to use.
4)Wait a couple of hours for the tape to return to room temperature.
5)Peel off a section of tape with a hole and using the pictures below as a guide, put the tape over the pinhole(of course with the pinhole itself showing through the hole, trim it, put another piece on the other side of the pinhole, mount with the pinhole showing through the hole in the camera, tape over the edges.
In the pictures below I was making six film canister solargraphy cameras. The last picture shows them ready to have the photographic paper installed and a final layer of tape around the tops. The pinholes themselves have a ’shutter’ made of a piece of electricians tape with the end folded over as tab for removal. The method should work with other types of pinhole cameras.
