Not deterred by a high temperature of six degrees below zero Fahrenheit, five artists and I made pinhole cameras at
ArtScene in De Pere a few weeks ago and used them to take pictures.
It was -14°F. when I left home. Everything had to be stuffed inside the Mustang. Rodinal and fixer would be the only things that would freeze in the trunk, but going back inside with stuff at these temperatures will condense buckets of water out of warm air. Wet cardboard is hard to work with.
Some of the group went out into that frigid air to take photographs, but the venue was pretty bright inside for the rest of us. I missed emphasizing some things while building and loading, which led to more film advance issues than I've had before, so I spent a bit of the afternoon with my hands in a changing bag (in addition to the time to load the film on the developing reels later on). These issues could be easily solved for a second roll of film, but tempus fuget.
So I didn't take any photographs (well, with this camera). Mine is the Natural Coffee Filters at the upper left, specifically using a black box for the camera body, and a red box for the shutters and WinderMinder to show what's going to be visible on the finished camera. I didn't record the size of the demonstration pinhole.
The next week, eager to implement some of the things I learned, setting up for the next session, this camera sat idle for a week. This was exacerbated by the gloomy winter weather, which I always complain about. Suddenly, a sunbeam appeared.
Chasing the sunbeam into the next room.
Just to the right, a close-up of the earring carousel.
In the sun room as well.
Père Noël highlighted by a late sunbeam hiking in the stairway window.
The sunbeam reflected off the satin finish oak door, creating an unusually bright, diffuse light on the dining room table.
This double exposure may be the universe's way of telling me to quit taking so many pictures from my normal spot on the couch. Exposed on top of that is the headstock of my black Ventura guitar with new black tuners, which, except for the logo and a few strings, is nearly invisible here since it doesn't reflect much light.
It's a very accurate clone of a Gibson L6-S, done sometime during the "lawsuit era." Gibson only made the L6-S between 1972 and 1979. The Ventura brand was then owned by the Japanese company Kaman Industries, which made Ibanez and Ovation, and was likely made in the same factory. It's distinguished by the six-position rotary switch that selects the pickups in different combinations.
It was OK, but I never really played it much. The idea of giving it an upgrade occurred to me sometime last fall. After abandoning a fantasy of doing it myself, I brought it to Heid Music to get the just OK chrome-covered pickups changed to Seymour Duncan Black Winter Blackened Matte Black high output Humbuckers designed for "any genre demanding pure sonic armageddon". The glossy blackletter logo is visible on the neck pickup. With black tuners and all the shiny little screws prominent, it really looks Metal. I'm naming it Kuro.
When
luthier Matt Hayes got a look at it, he told me he couldn't really level the frets because they were so worn. It never occurred to me that someone might have played it a lot before I got it, when it was already three decades old. With a new nut and complete refretting, though, it would be like a new guitar. Go for it. Now with the restored neck and the high-output humbuckers, I really love this guitar. My goal was to make a unique instrument, and I think I've done it. Now it looks and sounds like
my guitar. Anybody know how to tarnish the chrome bridge and tailpiece?
Natural Coffee Filters has a somewhere around .23mm pinhole, 30mm from a 6x6cm frame. The film is Kentmere 400 semistand developed in Rodinal 1:100.
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