Absent without pinhole

I've published at least one post a month for almost ten years. December's almost over so in order to preserve that streak, here's a short digest instead of a more unified story.

One of the things I've been occupied with lately is returning to playing with large format. In order to offer an Advanced Pinhole Photography workshop, I have been building a few more 4x5 Pinhole Lab Cameras, which need to be tested. There's also a box of Arista.edu 400 film that has been sitting around the darkroom for a few years, so the first new camera got a six-exposure test with that.

Arista.edu films, which are relabeled Foma stocks, are famous for being inexpensive but also for their atrocious reciprocity characteristics: one extra stop at 1-10 seconds, 2.5 stops from 10-100 seconds and 3 stops over 100 seconds. As I've been complaining about for the last few months, it's been awfully gloomy, wet and cold lately. It's a little challenging, but I can stay warm and dry inside and leave the shutter open for a few hours if necessary. What I think I've discovered is that after about half an hour, Arista.edu 400 just gives up and any additional exposure doesn't do much. Most of them were severely underexposed. This one done at the 70° 90mm position of the film plane got enough light right next to the windows.

Most of the reason for the test was to see if the whole negative was illuminated at the 120° 36mm position of the film plane. Looks like that worked out.

I've made bespoke cameras for Sarah's blog occasionally. She found a recipe for substituting Count Chocula cereal in Rice Crispy Treats and thought it might be interesting to document her crew preparing it with a special pinhole camera. The pinhole is behind his piercing gaze.

On the back, he is, of course, identified as a Counter.

To get everything to match with limited materials, it was necessary to be only 30mm deep for a 90° angle of view.

The treats were delicious but the pictures of making them will have to wait for Sarah's post. I got one frame to play with when we were done.

The theme for the Fox Valley Photography Group this month was Whatever You Happen To Be Doing This Month. I submitted that photograph. The discussion involved how little so-called wide-angle distortion this extremely wide-angle photograph exhibits and how incredibly close the camera had to be to fill the frame. What struck me was that the foreground squash appears larger than the rear orange pumpkin. It really demonstrates how the perception of depth is affected by the angle of view.

Another perception when working on Sarah's project was what a nice a little camera the Populist is and how easy it is to build. You should make one and use it on the 25th occurrence (The Silver occurrence!?) of Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day this spring.

Neville has been busy documenting excuses why I haven't been doing more pinhole photography, and Paterson the Pinhole Camera has been loaded with Kodak Gold 200 which can almost compete with Arista.edu on its reciprocity characteristics. It can be done but it's tricky to leave a camera around for an hours-long exposure with the Solstice-related holidays happening around you.

A happy and pinholy Yuletide to everyone!