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.
There is a new pinhole gallery on my primary web site, at ticino.cwoehrl.de.
You’ll find 35 images taken in and around the picturesque Verzasca Valley in the Swiss alps. Enjoy!
You’ll never know in advance, but chances are backlit scenes shot through a pinhole will have their very own kind of magic…
Verzasca Creek near Brione, Val Verzasca in the Ticinese Alps, taken on a hike earlier that summer. f/128 pinhole on Leica M4P, Agfa APX 100 and probably orange filter.
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.
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.
Hilly Hochsauerland region, earlier that spring: Leica M4 w/ 25mm pinhole body cap, Agfa APX 100. Images taken before sunrise with exposure times up to 10 minutes.
Leica M4, 25mm f/128 pinhole, APX 100, ca. 4 minutes exposure after sunset
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.
Sunset on Pinhole Evening
Scanned from the negative with minuscule tonality adjustments (dodge/burn) in Photoshop. Agfa Clack 6×9, ca. 20 seconds on Tri-X with orange filter.
