History Pinhole Photography at the Castle

In late October, I loaded the Variable Cuboid with a roll of Lomo 800 for what I expected to be another event that might happen soon at Photo Opp. However, it has sat on the kitchen table until now. 

The Photo Opp organizers struggled to find an indoor space for a winter photo walk that wouldn't be overwhelmed by a crowd of camera-toting visitors. Fortunately, the History Museum at the Castle in downtown Appleton was willing to let us roam the building early on a Sunday afternoon. We gathered in the sunny Siekman Room.

The rear stairwell.

The bottom of that stairwell.

Looking back from the galleries into the lobby and Siekman Room. Those walls have nothing to do with the original building. They were done to make it look a little more medieval when it was rebranded with its current name.

There was a sculptural wooden stationary bike in the Environment and Innovations section, as well as a hand-cranked version next to it. When I started the exposure, two little boys took turns pedaling the bike, but they left, and I took over for the rest of the exposure. The faster you pedaled, it appeared that you were going faster on the monitor, but it must have been some kind of loop because you never got any closer to the canyon wall in the background. Funny that the left monitor seems much dimmer than the other one, but it's solely because it was hidden behind my black shirt during most of the exposure.

Another scene the little boys abandoned shortly after the shutter opened in which I again had to fill in. There was a cylindrical screen with an astronomical survey photograph full of stars, galaxies and nebula. It was moving, but there was a projection of the full moon that I thought would stay still. The whole scene was replaced by a more close-up scene of a swirly nebula. My three-footed figure seems appropriate to the scene.

A wire weaving machine is one of the local innovations in the exhibit.

The massive flywheel in the rear that kept the whole thing moving smoothly.

With my master's degree in Audio-Visual Communication, I couldn't pass up this lantern slide projector, matched with some kind of virtual reality headset. The lantern was soon replaced by an electric lamp, and the three-inch square "lantern" slide format persisted in medical education into the middle of the 20th century. There was a lantern slide projector in the pile of equipment I inherited when I started the AV department at Knox College in 1977.

The gift shop.

The front stairwell.

I was left with a single frame in the camera. On my way out, the friendly staff member was at the front desk who had been chatting with us and pointing out architectural details all afternoon. We had another pleasant chat while the exposure occurred. Trying to describe what this sort of long exposure portrait would look like, I said she'd be recognizable to people who knew her, but otherwise, she'd be an anonymous blur. 

The 35mm front of the Variable Cuboid has a .25mm hand-drilled pinhole on an adjustable rising front with 15mm of travel above the axis. The Lomo 800 was developed in a Cinestill quart powder C41 kit.

Handicam meets 20th Century Color Film

Last year, I was gifted three rolls of Fuji color film that, to the best of the giver's memory, had expired sometime just short of Y2K. It had been in a closet ever since, along with a developing tank and some reels. I shot one of what I thought were three 24-exposure rolls. It turned out so dense you could just barely see there was an image. I scanned two that I could recognize had a picture hiding under the fog but gave up on the rest. It wasn't worth trying to use the other two rolls... but I didn't throw them away.

Later in the year, Fuji had the best price for 35mm ISO 400 color film. I bought a box of 36-exposure rolls, most of which have been used. Last month, I loaded Handicam with a 36-exposure roll of Fujifilm 400. It seems one of those free vintage rolls was 36 exposures. There was almost no difference between exposed and unexposed areas. On the light table, you could just see where the frames were and occasionally a bit of picture. I tried to scan them anyway.

Have you ever wondered what kind of picture you can get out of really heavily fogged outdated film? Let's find out.

My optometrist identified critical density in a secondary cataract in my right eye, although I couldn't tell anything. I decided to take advantage of Medicare while it still exists and get it taken care of. There was a half-hour wait at the Vision Center but, the good part of that is, I downloaded a novel by Balzac that I've been enjoying. Thanks to possibly the most cheerful medical practitioner I've encountered, it was almost fun.

On the interstate to Kaukauna for the Fox Valley Photography Group, I couldn't tell if the lights were any less sparkly but a pinholer is probably not the best judge of that sort of thing. It still surprises me that I can get up in a darkened discussion and set up a pinhole camera on a tripod, sit back down and repeat the process twenty minutes later, and no one in the group bats an eyelash. 

The next twenty minutes.

I have begun playing the guitar again and think I've identified a goal to keep me going, but I'm also guilting myself into it by taking pictures and posting them on the internet.

It snowed.

The magnolia and Central Street.

The demonstration of playing the electric snow shovel in a recent post may have been a little inaccurate. This is more like it.

Is there anything more of a pinhole cliché?

The new Mustang was extraordinarily dirty. Every time I went by the car wash, there was a 45-minute line. 

Finally committed to it armed with the Balzac, which made it endurable. 

I'm next! Having the sunshine on that windshield really shows off the dirt. The shutter was opened all during the carwash, but I forgot to close it until I got home. That really made a dense negative.

Although my regular optometrist thought my right eye was bad, the cheerful laser specialist thought my left was worse, so I returned the next week for a second dose of coherent light. 

With some knowledge of their routine, left alone after the dilation drops, I opened the shutter with the camera on the chair that held my coat and managed to close it before they returned. When I sat down and saw the camera had tilted over, I had to get up and repoint it. During the brief procedure, the beams looked red, but that's just a pilot light that the real high-energy stuff is on. They also use two lasers in sort of a rangefinder to target the blobs.

Paying the property taxes at City Hall.

A new upscale restaurant opened in the now-its-a-Marriot hotel by the river. Nicely designed dining room and adjacent bar. Very modern, and maybe a bit sterile, but at least not industrial.

Encouraging to see these big ice cubes in the cocktails. The food was pretty good.

There was a string quartet in the corner of the arena at the Farmers' Market.

The featured band in the lobby was an abbreviated version of Doctor Kickbutt's Orchestra of Death.

The faithful violinist who has been saving for college at every market for two years was in the vestibule.

It was the first day of sturgeon spearing season. The lake was full of trucks and shanties. By the time I walked out to the end of Ames Point it was snowing pretty heavily.

My sore toe is all better now. My doctor and I agreed it was better to get all this data and find out it was healing rather than some of the alternatives. The very nice technician who did the early circulation tests led with "Have you ever had Gangrene?" One of her tests showed a flat line.

Handycam has a hand-drilled .17mm pinhole 24mm from a 24x36mm frame. The old film was developed in a Cinestill Quart Powder C41 kit.

Midwinter

In April, I'm going to have an exhibit at the Oshkosh Public Library of photographs I have done of their building and a few of other libraries. Also included will be stereocards of the places behind the scenes that patrons normally don't see. After meeting with Sandy Towland, Community Engagement Librarian, about how we were going to accomplish the stereo pictures, I took a look at the exhibition space and was concerned I didn't have enough photographs. Morton was along, loaded with Kentmere 400. 

The transition from the new 1993 addition to the original building was one of the images in a double exposure the last time I visited. The cases at the left will contain a display of my cameras. 

         

The other image in that double exposure was a sunbeam in a different corner of the stacks.

While we were looking around for subjects for the stereo photographs, I wish I had thought of getting this sunbeam in the original staircase. I noticed it later when the door was locked. Leaning the camera right against the window worked out with the addition of the reflections of Morton and the lights around the dome behind me, as well as some interesting interaction between the window and the very overexposed bit of sky at the top of the door.

A crew of outdoor workers in camo gear enjoying lunch in a spot on the second floor with a panoramic view of the parking lot. After the shutter was opened another guy arrived and conversed with the group while I tried to be inconspicuous, looking at American history books with the camera sitting between volumes on a shelf.

The ice on Lake Winnebago is two feet thick, but we had a warm spell last week that melted what little snow we've had, and opened the major cracks wide enough that the fishing clubs removed all the bridges. Almost all the huts are gone as well. It's since frozen again and is now a clear sheet of ice.

A maple leaf that had melted into the ice and then was covered when the new melt refroze.

 

Sarah decided that it was more appropriate to celebrate Valoween at the end of a month with 31 days, especially since it then was also the same weekend as Imbolc.

Walking down Main Street, I thought the Inverse Square Law would give a lot of depth to this arrangement of ornaments in the window of a salon.

On my way back, I again leaned the camera right up against a window to capture the salon's morning light.

The theme for the Fox Valley Photographic Group this month is to capture the splash of a water droplet with the shortest exposure you can manage. This is approximately 264,000 drops over the three minutes required to get the exposure.

After a lapse of seven years, and at least two years of trying to get myself to do it, I have begun to play the guitar again. Maybe if I post about it here and elsewhere on social media, I'll have to keep up with it no matter how awful it sounds.

Leon's Frozen Custard closes for January and February.

Morton has two hand-drilled .25mm pinholes, on the axis and 11mm above it, 30mm from a 6x6cm frame. The film was Kentmere 400 semistand developed in Rodinal 1:100.

Stereo Southside Sweetie

Hughes' Chocolates is one of those "Only-in-Oshkosh" kind of businesses. They've been operating in the basement of a home on a quiet street since 1942. Most of the employees are still from the family. Last month, Sarah, Andy and I realized after four decades in Oshkosh that we had never been there, although we have always been aware of it. We bought two boxes at their tiny retail counter, at the bottom of the stairs.

It just happens that the boxes are exactly the same size as two 24mm wide boxes and two 60mm boxes, like it was made for a stereo medium format camera. The white cardboard may seem suspect for opacity, but it's heavy grey cardboard covered by a white glossy paper with alligator embossing. The boxes are 45mm deep, but I already have a stereo camera at that angle of view, so it was cut down to 35mm, getting pretty darn wide angle for stereo - an 80-degree angle of view. Most lensed stereo cameras have "normal" angle of view, at 75mm for this format. There's one stereo pinhole camera this size that's even wider at 28mm.

I made it without any kind of template, just laying out parts with a pencil and ruler. One problem here was I made the holes on the front a little too small. They were wide enough, but I couldn't put the upper pinholes any more than 8mm above the axis without blocking part of the image. That's not as dramatic as my normal 11mm rise, but it still was useful in keeping verticals parallel.

Both front and back feature the top of the box, with the shutters on the inside.

Once again, I stole the four .25mm pinholes from the stereo solargraphic project cameras last year.

As soon as the camera was finished, I loaded it with a roll of Cinestill 800T, which I'd never used before, and rushed down to Hughes' to initiate it. They were very gracious and let me take several photographs.

When the film came out of the wash, I was horrified to see I had been cursed by the demons of analog photography. Random light leaks were all along the film's length. In some pairs, the right frame is dark, but in one, the left is more dense. A few have leaks in the corners. Two appear to have the left frame heavily exposed as though the shutter had been partly open, but that's impossible. The shutter is one piece. If one side is partly open, so is the other. I can't explain this pattern. This also freaked out the scanner pretty badly so the color couldn't get balanced the same on most of the pairs.

This is all very disappointing but is a great learning opportunity about how your brain makes up the best picture it can with the information it's got. The light leaks appear as light areas, so I burned them into almost black and desaturated their general red tones. Think of a double exposure. Dark areas are unexposed and available to make a picture. When you merge a stereoscopic pair, your brain does the same thing. If one eye sees a dark field and the other a picture, it will just fill in the image it has. Despite these being somewhat unmatched pairs in color and density with occasional dark blobs, they all merge into a stereo picture, which is my objective, after all.

They are presented here in cross-eyed viewing format, where the left and right images are switched. Crossing your eyes makes a double image. When the middle ones overlap, concentrate on focusing your eyes on some detail in the image and it pops into depth. Some simplified graphic examples are at this link that may help learn to do this.

Here are links to PDFs with red/cyan anaglyphs and parallel Holmes stereo cards, if you're set up for viewing those.

The front porch has a neon sign identifying the house and hand lettered signs featuring special items. This is the only advertising Hughes' does. The small strip beneath the neon directs you to the side door.

 

This is particularly disappointing. Nearly a third of the left frame is obliterated, but in stereo, it's almost unnoticeable.

They let me go around the corner to part of the production area.  Look at all those marble tables, just like in my kitchen.

Our visit to Hughes' in December was inspired by having a glass of Hughes' Chocolate Stout when we went out to lunch, made in honor of the chocolatier by Fox River Brewing, which I visited next. Two young men were working in the production area and allowed me to stick the camera just inside the door. Fermenters #1 and #2 on the left are currently making Hughes' Chocolate Stout.

I bought a six-pack to pair with the Crawlers (Turtles in any other candy store) I bought earlier. There were a few wispy leaks in the shadows at the top, but otherwise the only pair matching in color and density.

Here's my view from the couch again. I thought the objects on the glass table might be interesting. One of my objectives was to see how close you could get and still get stereo. It looks like within half a meter is no problem.

 

This was all very mysterious. There are at least three layers of cardboard between the film and any light, including a layer of black foam core at the top and bottom. The film isn't expired for another year and I removed it from the original foil wrapper. There's a possibility of "fat roll" fogging, but I unloaded the camera in dim light, sealed it with "exposed" tape and stuck it in my pocket. I hate to blame the film, but I don't understand how it could have happened.

To eliminate the camera as the cause, I very carefully exposed a roll of Kentmere 100.

Back to play with the glass table in the sun room

The opposite angle from a little farther away.

Another glass table in another corner of the room.

How about a whole room. Trying to catch the sunbeam that reflects off our neighbor's window and into the dining room. It appeared only intermittently but it looks like it came out at least once during the two-hour exposure. The lights on the chandelier were only on for about 5 minutes.

Outside in the sun for a serious test of the camera's opacity, with a subject a little further away, using the rising set of pinholes. The lanai definitely sticks out from the house.

After the earth rotated back around to face the sun, another light-tightness test, again with the rising pinholes.

There was a little variance in density between the two frames in a few, but not much. Less than a stop. No light leaks. Wish I knew what caused the issues with the Cinestill 800T.

Other than the perfect size of the boxes from Hughes, I had another reason to make a wide-angle stereo camera, which would be appropriate for its local history roots. It seems ready for that project now.

Stereo Southside Sweetie has hand-drilled .25mm pinholes, on the axis and 8mm above it, 35mm from the film, in side-by-side 6x6cm chambers. The Cinestill 800T was developed in a Cinestill quart powder C41 kit. The Kentmere 100 was semi-stand developed in Rodinal 1:100.