No Audio

 

After making Hughie from one-pound chocolate boxes because the dimensions were perfect for a medium format stereo camera, I noticed the box from my AirPods in the potentials pile in the basement. I had observed its useful height earlier, but it wasn't wide enough for the standard "film roll-image chamber-film roll" arrangement for a 6x6cm format camera. This time it occurred to me to make a Compact Series style film holder with the film rolls tucked into the space under a triangular image chamber. It justifies the use of two clichés: it's a really good box, and pinholers view every container as a potential camera.

A title for the blog post came immediately. When I was hired to start a centralized Audio-Visual department at Knox College, the grant funded a half-time graphic artist. Mike Ireland, a watercolorist, got that job. I had also begun teaching Photography in the Art Dept. About a year into our department's existence, we got invited to exhibit our work in the main art gallery on campus. Because we both played guitar and made up AudioVisual Services, we thought it would be funny to title the show "No Audio." It was the first thing I thought when I decided to make the totally silent device.

Now, I have to make it into a camera. Despite the box's proximity to the size necessary, there were several irritating customizations. 

I had intended to make the counter shutter internal like the shutter on the front. After first drilling the winder holes in the three-layer cardboard top of the box, I realized they would have to be modified if a 3mm shutter was glued inside the back. Also, I had really made a mess of the hole in the back for the counter but was pretty proud of the neat holes in the top and didn't want to rework them, so I made a conventional exterior shutter out of the side of the box the Apple TV came in (not that good a box).

It's 40mm from pinhole to image plane. A 73° angle of view, getting heretically narrow for pinhole. The .28mm pinhole was repurposed from last year's stereo solargraphic project.

It follows the basic scheme of the Compact Series of a film holder with bays tucked into the image chamber. The top and bottom needed a few layers of foamcore, but two of the three layers of cardboard on the bottom needed to be removed to make it fit just right, and so the tripod nut extended through the thick outer box. The sides were also close but needed that most klugey of adjustments, several cardboard shims to get the fit exactly right so the film spooled easily.

The film holder is then inserted into the back, which is then covered by the front. The opening in the front and the shutter are big enough for an axial and risen pinhole, but I forgot to cut the shutter in half before it all got glued together. I must confess, after six months in the basement, it all sat on the kitchen table for awhile, and it looks a little beat up. But I want my cameras to look hand made, right? Everything was measured and drawn out with a pencil and ruler as I went along. No laying out anything on the computer.

In addition to being soundless, this post will be colorless. With a nod to the product design, I loaded it with monochromatic Ilford HP5+.

The donors.

My old wired headphones and the iPod mini I had been using because it was a lot lighter than the phone in my shorts pocket in the summer.

Did the ease of use of the AirPods contribute to my guitar renaissance? Intentionally using the extreme depth of field of pinhole here.

My only customization to the Telecaster - a Seymour Duncan Hot Rail humbucker at the bridge.

It's a lot more pleasant practicing in the Sunroom than in the basement.

To keep the impact on the room and the sanity of the neighborhood as minimal as possible, another type of Pod, from the '90's.

I haven't unleashed the Marshall yet, but the fan runs and pilot lights come on.

Sarah's portable Marshall bluetooth speaker.

Sarah's electric piano.

The acoustic section.

Sarah's grandfather's trombone, missing a few crucial, expensive pieces.

I found a bunch of cassettes and CDs still in their cases, which I've been listening to in the '99 Mustang. Too bad the label on the cassette is so overexposed. The list of songs is done with a manual typewriter and the album title "Fathers and Sons" is done with presstype.

The AirPod Pro Box Camera has a .28mm pinhole 40mm from a 6x6cm frame. The Ilford HP5+ was semistand developed in Rodinal 1:100.  

I made a camera in 2017 out of an iPhone Box and named it the 10th Anniversary iPhone Box Camera. That blog post has gotten the most hits of all of Pinholica, except for the plans to make a Populist. Let's see what the search engines do with this.