When 2.5 hours of exposure still aren’t enough

Earlier this summer we spent a few days cycling along the eastern German Baltic Sea coast. One night on the beach, with nothing more than the stars above us, I used the pinhole-modded Agfa Clack for some long-time exposures of up to 2.5 hours. This turned out to still be way too short though; here’s a first contact scan, heavily adjusted to at least show some structure; on the light table there’s hardly anything to see on the negative at all. – Well, let’s pretend those dust specks I didn’t care to retouch are the stars

WPPD 2010: My Contribution

My son’s soccer team warming up, later to win 7:0. Taken with the modded Agfa Clack on Tri-X 400, using a yellow filter, ca. 1sec exposure. Clicking the image leads to the official gallery.

Don’t forget: April 25 is Pinhole Day

Well, the headline says it all… This year’s last April sunday marks pinhole day’s 10th anniversary. Let’s all go out and find a great spot to photograph through a small hole! (If I’m not mistaken, this year will see my fourth contribution.)

Getting Rid of the Dust on Your Scans

It’s not just the act of taking the photo that’s slowed down by exposing through a pinhole; here I’m also encountering certain specific difficulties in postprocessing, namely in undusting pinhole negative scans. That’s because the automated anti-dust routines in imaging software tend to work best in blurry, out-of-focus areas of an image while pinhole images usually aren’t out of focus. So here’s how I clean up dusty negatives:

Mixing Fringe Techniques

Lately I’m experimenting with two different fringe photographic techniques combined: Shooting pinhole on C41 film, then developing in a special “low color” process. Resulting images are not exactly fine art, but I like what’s happening

Hamburg, Planten un Blomen park, Gingko tree. Captured on Kodak Portra 160NC film w/ Agfa Clack 6x9 pinhole

Point-and-Shoot, 1950′s Style

My pinhole-modded Agfa Clack got a sister a while ago. Looks pretty much like the first one (so no new hardware photo) except for the lens which remains the original 1-element glass. Quite affordable at 5 Euro, even complete with leather bag this time!

Hamburg-Wandsbek. Tri-X at Push +1

With that baby you can happily snap along at 1/35 second and choose between “far” and “close” as well as between f-stops /11 and /13,5. While not as reduced as pinholing, using this tool still feels archaic and out-of-season. More pictures from the first film over at Silberpixel starting here, one per week through mid-December.

It Was Getting Dark Quickly

Oh, those problems we never had with regular cameras…

When I started this exposure of Germany’s Mosel river around sunset, my exposure meter suggested 10 minutes at f/128. But while taking the picture (camera attached to the slanting windowsill by rubber putty alone, hence the motion blur), it grew dark so quickly I decided to go for 20 minutes. And still, the result is horribly underexposed, hardly any detail in the shadows.

Sheila Bocchine: Pinhole Portraits

Via a comment a few weeks ago I stumbled upon Sheila Bocchine who does amazing things with her pinhole camera. While I’m using mine for landscapes most of the time (seeing subjects that won’t run away as somewhat natural for this kind of imagery), Sheila specializes in portraits and weddings, and her art is nothing short of stunning. Please go and have a looong look!

As Sheila's portraits are usually "all rights reserved", here's one of her other images, which is CC licensed.

How to Use Filters On a Pinhole Body Cap

While it is a useful option to add pinhole body caps to exchangeable-lens cameras, there’s always the problem of how to use filters with black-and-white film. Enter modelling putty:

Known in Germany as “Fotoknete”, this stuff is a wonder of longevity. My sample of “Hama Haftpast” is almost 20 years old by now and still works as if new. Rip off a little piece, form it, attach it, and once you’re done, detach it without leaving a trace.

Scanning Pinhole Negs

For those of us used to traditional darkroom work, a fully or partially digital workflow continues to have its subjective drawbacks. For negative scans I use a properly calibrated mid-range flatbet scanner and decent software (Silverfast Ai) which I think I can handle, and still I feel there’s more to the neg than meets the scanner’s eye.

I can’t nail it with proper data, but still there’s the gnawing feeling that, especially with (though not restricted to) pinhole negatives, I am not capable of reproducing the full tonality I used to get from comparable material back then in the darkroom. I can keep the contrast as low as possible, and still there’s a tendency of highlights getting lost in the scan where I used to get fine nuances in printing.

Admitted: Those fine nuances usually were the result of lots of trial and error, involving lots of chemicals and photographic paper being wasted. Here’s where I keep telling myself that there are advantages to the digital workflow… too bad I don’t see any of them on screen.