Monday, November 25, 2019

Testing Variable Cuboid back no. 3 and 35mm front with adjustable rising front.

You’ve heard this one before. You can’t make a camera and not try it out.

For the post about building the Variable Cuboid System, I made a third film back and a new 35mm front with the fully adjustable rising pinhole. I have to report that it took a while to make with all of the little holes to cut out and steps to wait for the glue to dry. It took me six days and an additional four days for a new 100mm front. It was pretty straightforward however and everything went together just as I expected.

One thing I’m very pleased about is that all the fronts I’ve made previously fit on the new back, and the two new fronts constructed around this back fit backs number 1 and 2. Interchangeable parts are the defining feature of a camera system.

But ya gotta go take pictures with it. I really wanted to get this done in order to use it for the Reimagined Rephotographic project.

It snowed. I shoveled. It’s going to be a long winter, although it’s in the mid-40’s and raining right now.


Around the corner is the Glad Tidings Tabernacle. I wonder if the inside is as plain as the exterior.


I drove to the other side of the river to South Park, the second largest in the city. I’ve never taken photographs there. It features a meandering water feature with a few wide pond-like spots.


This was half way across the park from the parking lot. It was really cold and windy to be standing around waiting for pinhole length exposures. Maybe that comes out in this bleak view of a cluster of bare oak trees.


On the way back to the car, it gave me a bit of a warm feeling finding this new playground with it’s mission of diversity.


Frozen or not, I gotta keep at this. I warmed up a bit in the car while driving downtown. This building has only two storefronts on the first floor, but it must have a lot of little apartments or offices on the second and third. Another composition that screamed out for my square format and I’m always attracted to bricked over windows.


Just around the corner of the building where I can escape the wind in an entryway during the exposure, looking across Merrit Avenue at the Wagner Opera House. The bottom floor on this side is the bicycle shop I patronize. I just found out that the first floor has always been retail of some kind. The performance hall was upstairs, half of which is now a dance studio and the rest is rented as artist’s studios.


Going left to the intersection with Main and crossing Merrit, we see the most popular scene depicted in the Plein Air Festival this summer, the Webster Block with it’s picturesque turret. The buildings were creating an effective wind tunnel but I really wanted to get this roll of film finished. The tripod legs were over the curb and lots of traffic went by during the exposure. This is really too far away for the thirty-five, but the other fronts were back in the car..  The view down Main and Church and the stoplight in the foreground really distinguish this one from my normal architectural schtick.


It wouldn’t be a test of the Variable Cuboid if I didn’t use a different front. I swapped to the 20mm which I’ve kind of been ignoring. I left it in the kitchen after cleaning up after dinner. This was a three hour exposure during which no human entered this room.


The next morning I got up when it was just getting light. I wanted to develop the film that morning so I could use the camera back that afternoon to finish the 100mm front. I went for an old standby, the mantle piece, recently outfitted for the post-Halloween autumn. The last few minutes before I closed the shutter, the sun came up and beamed in through the window.


Everything seems to work and I’ve already exposed two rolls of different color films with these new items and the rest of the components of the system.

The 35mm front has the .25mm pinhole that was formerly mounted in the risen position on the old 35. The 20mm has a .23mm pinhole.

Lomography Earl Grey 100 stand developed in Rodinal 1:100

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