From f295: Beantown and Back; my first travel series

F295 was an international discussion forum begun and administered by Tom Persinger. Originally just about pinhole photography, it expanded into all kinds of alternative methods.  I was the first member about a minute or two after I got a message announcing it on Gregg Kemp's legendary Pinhole Visions email list. I immediately posted the first picture. My basic format of pictures and text began there. It was active from 2004 until 2015 but it remains on-line. Recently it disappeared from the web for a few days, and that prompted me to decide to reprise some of my favorites here at Pinholica, for backup if no other reason. Where possible I'll upload the original image files and occasionaly edit for a typo or grammatical error.

The Roadtrip, Abroad and other travel posts with The Populist and a desk-top tripod on this blog began with this one on January 23, 2008.

Weekend before last I attended a conference at Boston College on "Immersive Education," using 3D virtual environments to teach. All taken with the Populist. (Yes, I know, I should have taken the Stereo Populist for this particular event.)

Outagamie County Regional Airport. Doesn't it look cold? United 7213 - On time

O'Hare. United 882. One hour late.

The excitement of business travel. Every hotel room in the United States looks exactly like this. Most have two beds though.

The conference took place at Boston College. We got there a little early and they got started late. This is the rotunda of Gossen Hall. Pretty fancy college the Jesuits run there. It was pretty dark and the place was deserted so I left the camera there while I went to the first demonstrations and came back and got it about half an hour later.

I did get to see my son's apartment while I was there. Don't be alarmed, it's actually a fairly decent place, it's just that his decorating style is a little post-apocalyptic. Of course when one of your parents comes to town, you can expect a free meal out. Here he and his girlfriend decide from all the possibilities. I'm standing behind him talking to his mother on his cell phone during most of the exposure.

The restaurant they picked has 85 kinds of beer on tap and 240 kinds of bottles. What do think that says about what he thinks about his dad? The food was good, though.

Here's one from a session on assessment and learning theory on Sunday. More of that fancy Jesuit college. On the panels of the barrel vaulted ceiling are quotes from Plato in Greek, Webster in English, and Virgil in Latin.

(Technical note. All the above on Walgreens Studio 35, the following on Kodak Gold.)

Another view of the lecture hall. Fancy, but cold. Notice most of the participants are wearing coats. It was like this all weekend. I'm not sure if this was Yankee economy or some kind of idea of penance.

Finally, on our way home. Sunset at Logan Airport.

United 545 from Logan and 5939 from O'Hare - on time.

I didn't include this in the original post: The Populist has a .15mm pinhole 24mm from 24x36mm frame.

Building the Pinhole Lab Camera extension and some new materials.

June 2019. When my university retiree account disappeared with a new change in policy, the pictures I uploaded to this blog while logged into that account disappeared. I'm working on fixing that but it's going to be at least a summer long project. All the templates are still available if you can follow along without pictures.

I don't think I have to go into the construction of the Pinhole Distance Reducer. The Pinhole Distance Extension however, although made much like the camera, needs a few special methods.

Links:  Original Lab Camera Description    Construction    Feeding and Use    Link to Templates    Excusado    Reducer and Extension

The first step is of course to glue the template to card stock and cut out the parts. All the parts should be cut a little long.  Every camera is going to have a slightly different dimension, and we want to avoid gaps that could create light leaks. We'll cut them to exact length when they're wrapped around the box. Fold and glue the flaps to mimic the double layered sides of the camera back.

To keep the camera front rigid while you wrap parts around it, you'll have to remove the Pinhole Mount and as we did with the camera, place it in the camera backwards to prevent the sides from squeezing together while you wrap things around it. If you had made a couple of those Reducers, those would also serve well for this purpose.

You'll notice the use of clothes pins for clamps. In the past I've always used binder clips to clamp parts.  Binder clips work really well, but they have two problems.  They're only about 10mm deep so you could only really clamp the edges of a part, and they're almost a little too strong and can leave visible marks. Clothes pins are probably more readily available and per unit, probably much cheaper.  They're not as strongly sprung but that can be made up for by using several of them.  They usually come in packages of 50, so you'll probably have plenty. The gentler pressure also doesn't leave marks and they have a longer throat so you can clamp up to 25mm or so deep.

To start, wrap the Back Extension around the camera front and slide it into the light trap.  Mark where it overlaps and cut it for an exact fit. Since it's not glued to anything yet, you have to hold it together with a piece of tape until it's glued to other parts. It's also a good time to roughen the part where the light trap cover will be glued.

With the Back Extension inserted into the light trap of the camera front, place the Light Trap Extension inside the Back Extension. It should sit right on the Camera front. Mark it where it overlaps and trim it to fit. Try not to have both of the joints in the same place.  Put the two joints on opposite sides of the camera. Again, tape the ends together to hold it temporarily and then glue it in place and clamp it.  Here's a place where the longer reach of the clothes pins really comes in handy.

At about this point, I ran out of Aleens Tacky Glue and started using Elmer's X-treme School Glue, which I think is a little more widely available than Aleens (I got it at Walgreens).  I'm pretty happy with it, especially the dispenser cap that twists open and closed with one hand so I don't have to keep track of a cap, I think it dries a little faster than Aleens (15 minutes), and from using it on a couple other projects, it really does form a strong bond.

Place the Camera back over the Light Trap Extension.  It should slide up right against the Back Extension. Wrap the Light Trap Cover around and mark and trim to fit as before. Draw reference lines so you can make sure everything remains in place when you remove it from the camera front so you don't glue them together.  Roughen the area where the glue will go.  Mark the side of the Extension with the pinholes so you can place it back into the custom fit light trap.  The glued part is now a little far from the edges for clamps to reach, but you can use that infinitely adaptable clamp, the human hand, to hold it in place for a few minutes and read the New York Times or something until it sets.

Most of this will have double layers, but there's still the possibility that light might sneak through some of the joints, so it's probably a good idea to paint the interior.  I've always done that with a fast drying flat black enamel like Krylon, but that requires a pretty well-ventilated environment, has a tendency to get where you don't want it, and it's too cold to use it outside in winter in Wisconsin.

I bought an 8 ounce sample of Behr Ultra Flat Black interior latex wall paint on the internet from Home Depot.  I'm not sure you can get it that way in the store. I think Sherman-Williams also makes something similar.  It's kind of weird stuff.  It comes out of the can like tar and you have to thin it with just a few drops of water. If you get it too thin, it's not opaque.  It is almost completely odorless, cleans up with soap and water and dries to the touch in about an hour.  I used two coats anyway.

I noticed while taking pictures it had the tendency to bow in on the single-layer long side and block part of the image, so an extra layer of card stock on the interior of that side to stiffen it up might be a worthwhile addition.

If you're a regular viewer of our program, you know the next step. Go out with it and take pictures.

Pinhole Lab Camera Accessories: Pinhole Distance Reducer and Extension

June 2019. When my university retiree account disappeared with a new change in policy, the pictures I uploaded to this blog while logged into that account disappeared. I'm working on fixing that but it's going to be at least a summer long project. All the templates are still available if you can follow along without pictures.

How far the image-forming objective is from the film plane is one of the fundamental descriptors of a camera system.  Along with film size and aperture, it determines most of the visual and technical attributes of the image.

With lenses this is known as focal length. Determining it with lenses is complicated.  With my Canon FD 20mm f2.8 lens, the nearest piece of glass is 50mm from the film plane.  It takes a whole article in Wikipedia to explain it.  With pinhole, you can just measure with a ruler, or in my current case, cut the right size piece of cardboard.

One of the prime characteristics of the Pinhole Lab Camera is having two separate pinhole distances to experiment with -  2.5 and 4 inches.  That's a bit of a limited selection, and stays pretty well in the moderately wide angle segment of the range.

Links:  Original Description    Construction    Feeding and Use    Link to Templates   Excusado

Two fairly simple accessories can expand the options available, and of course, impact the image.

A Pinhole Distance Reducer can be easily made by cutting 4 x 4 inch squares of another widely available material, corrugated cardboard, and gluing them together.  With the box I used, it took five layers to make a half inch.

Placing that against the back of the camera front (of course stuck on with a loop of tape), you can then place the paper at a 2 inch distance from the pinhole giving a 64 x 90 degree angle of view at f102 (with our .5mm pinholes), a 35mm equivalent of 18mm.

Adding a second reducer brings you to 1.5 inches, 76 x 106 degrees at f76, a 35mm equivalent of 14mm.

Making an extension to move the film away from the pinhole requires a part made from glueing a template to cardboard and folding and glueing as with the camera.  It's basically a two inch band the size of the camera back which fits into the camera front. It is then stepped down to the size of the front, with a light trap around the joint which the back then fits into.  It's sort of as if you cut off the front of a camera. The template is on-line, and I will be doing a separate step-by-step post on building it, including notes on a few new materials.

One of these extensions makes the camera 6 inches long,  23 x 36 degrees at f305, which brings us all the way out to the range often referred to as - drum roll - normal! A 35mm equivalent of 55mm.  Also we've finally gotten to where those .5mm pinholes are optimal according to Lord Rayleigh.

Finally a second extension (make two at once and save on glue-drying time!) will bring you out to moderate telephoto portrait range, 18 x 28 degrees at f406, a 35mm equivalent of 70mm. That f ratio is getting to be a whopper, with a sunny day exposure of two minutes with paper.  If we're just considering the width of the image, this is the same as the Moderately Telephoto Pinhole Camera in a Plain Brown Wrapper.

Here's a table describing the entire range.

Depicted graphically.

And where the photons hit the film plane.

At one and a half inches

Two inches

Two and a half inches

Four inches

At six inches

and at eight inches.

Here's one of those documentation shots that shows the relationship of things from the side.

Here's another sequence of the full range in a more confined setting.  The camera is up against the headrest on the rear passenger-side seat of a Mustang.

One and half inches

Two inches

Two and a half.

Four inches

Six inches

And all the way out at eight.

If Mazda wasn't already using it, maybe the motto of the Pinhole Lab Camera should be "Zoom, Zoom"

Pinhole Lab Camera Accessories: A Tripod

June 2019. When my university retiree account disappeared with a new change in policy, the pictures I uploaded to this blog while logged into that account disappeared. I'm working on fixing that but it's going to be at least a summer long project. 

Sometimes you get involved in a project, and because it's interesting and maybe for reasons that could either be described as obsessive-compulsive or religious, you go at it for a little while too long, and then find that maybe it's not worth it.

In workshops, I've always found it frustrating not to be able to give everybody a tripod so they could have freedom in placing and pointing the camera. I used to give out doubly bagged sandbags for participants to mush into a surface for the camera to sit on to level it or to point it up or down a little. With the Pinhole Lab Camera with it's rising and falling and left and right shift pinholes, my intention was to overcome that somewhat, but you know, you don't always have a perfectly level surface, and sometimes, you just want to point the camera directly at something and take advantage of that sweet rectilinearity of the pinhole when it's on axis with a flat piece of film.  There's also the issue, also addressed by the rising front of the Pinhole Lab Camera, of having the foreground fill half the frame.  If you're taking a portrait of someone across the table, having the camera six or so inches above it will help a lot with the composition, and the rising front can have a strange effect on shapes like heads near the top of the frame.

Wouldn't it be cool if you could make a tripod as easily as a pinhole camera?  How pinholy!  You could take advantage of the skills and materials used to build (and for me, design) the Pinhole Lab Camera.

Links:  Original Description    Construction    Feeding and Use    Link to Templates   Excusado

So I laid out the template so that it would fit on a tabloid sheet of paper. I tried to make the legs as long as I could on that paper size. I could make them bigger on multiple sheets, but you'd have to do the "glue A adjacent to A" several times and that increases the chance that something's going to get glued down out of alignment.

The forces on a tripod are greater than on a camera, and this model relies more on multiple layer lamination and folds and flaps to get the strength to adjust and hold the camera.  Maybe relies on them too much.  Some parts have multiple folds and it takes six binder clips or clothespins to clamp some of them.

I mentioned I worked for my dad in a plant making feed and fertilizer mixers in a previous post.  He not only managed the plant but he was the designer and engineer as well.  I make these templates on a computer with Illustrator and do repeated iterations to find out what works.  My dad would do it on a drawing table with trigonometry and the parts would fold and assemble together the first time. The feed chutes for those mixers had to fit into existing buildings and come in at some strange compound angles. He gave me the Chemical Rubber Company book of Standard Mathematical Tables for high school graduation.

So, what have I come up with?

It's a desktop tripod about 7 inches tall.  Not too big, but getting it that far off the surface it's sitting on gives you a lot of flexibility with composition.

The tilting head is held by a bolt and wingnut.  I just happened to have the little spring which allows a variable drag to the tilt so you don't have to constantly loosen and tighten it, you can just move it freely and it will stay in place.

It attaches to the camera with rubber bands. I hate to have a roll film camera without a tripod mount, but it's a pain with a single shot camera, especially one that's intended to be used in all sorts of orientations.  So the tripod has a little platform that can be attached with rubber bands. (Carry extras.)

It has a head that will tilt back and forth about 45 degrees.  It's a little steadier if that tilt is toward the single leg side of the tripod, but it's easy to switch from one side to the other if you're tilting the camera the other way.

If you need to tilt any higher, you can just change the orientation of the camera.

The legs are restrained from opening by a piece of butcher's twine (I do this in my kitchen) threaded through each leg through holes big enough to get it through and move, yet small enough to give a little resistance to hold the movement in place. I did this by glueing the end of the twine to a toothpick.

By adjusting where those legs are, you can make the camera level on a non-level surface.

It's admittedly a limited set of flexibilities, but it adds dramatically to the supports you can utilize and maintain a level camera. (You do want a level camera, right?)

It's very light and wouldn't be much use in a breeze.  Maybe if I could find those sandbags.

It's just a hair on the complicated side to make. The template is on-line if you can figure it out from these images.

The problem is that you can buy a table top tripod better than this for under $10.  You can get a 50 inch good-enough tripod from Target for $11 and a pretty decent 62 inch one from Freestyle for $30.  And you can get some real deals on spiffy vintage travel tripods for cheap on eBay. You'll need to make a platform to attach the camera with the rubber bands.

But if you're feeling pinholy some Sunday...

Excusado con La Cámara de Laboratorio Estenopeica

Ironically, the room in our house with the most beautiful light is the bathroom.  It's a small room illuminated by a single window which faces directly south overlooking our neighbors' roof.

Part of the beauty of the light are the myriad surfaces that reflect the light around. Almost everything in the room is at least a little bit glossy. From the high shine of the porcelain, to the low sheen of the tiles and walls. Even one of the fabrics, the tied back curtain, is satiny, as well as translucent. There are two large mirrors. And it's all light colored - short exposures (well, for interior pinhole anyway). Depending on what kind of weather is illuminating that window, there are a million variations.

Key to my current pinhole needs, there are several level surfaces, near the edge, to place a camera.

I think it looks like a Renaissance palace. The walls are beautifully and credibly marbleized.  This is all Sarah's doing.  When we moved in it had yellow walls, blue and purple plastic tiles and two fluorescent tubes that buzzed and flashed on either side of a generic mirrored cabinet above the sink which was supported by hexagonal chrome pipes. Boy, that woke you up in the morning.

And there is the appeal of the classical Weston reference.

It is also inside and out of the wind.  As I write this the temperature is going back up to seasonal levels but that's still fairly cold around here.

Sounds like a good place for some ground-truth testing with the Pinhole Lab Camera.

Links:  Original Description    Construction    Feeding and Use    Link to Templates

I'm going to quit referring to these by their sizes and just describe the format. Long and short distance to the pinhole; rectangular, curved panorama (which can come in regular or large), or square.

We'll begin with an overview of what we're working with.  This was with a super-wide large short curved panorama using the on-axis pinhole, with the camera supported by the window sill.  You can just barely see it on the right side of the door mirror.

Here's my attempt at the Weston classic.  Short vertical rectangle.  Rising front pinhole.  It's not completely on the floor. I put the Kleenex box under it. Not a curved format, but the frame of the mirror is a little bowed by a paper curl.  Pinhole fun, huh? The verticals are parallel though.

Long curved panorama with the rising front pinhole.  Hardly looks curved, does it.  You can see the camera on the cabinet, just slightly higher than the bottom of the mirror frame, but close enough that if the on-axis pinhole had been used, it would have been right in the middle and therefore straight, but now it's positioned near the bottom by the rising front.  If you look at where the sloped wall meets the ceiling at the right you can tell it's curved.  The top of the frame would have been really curved if it was in the picture.  But it's not, so to the viewer it doesn't exist.

Short square through the on-axis pinhole. Camera is sitting on the toilet tank with it which is only about 8 inches deep.

Short curved panorama with the rising pinhole on the top of the cabinet.  You get the wide angle in this one, but since there are no obvious straight horizontal lines, the curve doesn't really dominate the composition.

Long vertical rectangle. falling front. Camera is on the toilet seat.

Short square format with the on-axis pinhole, camera on the sink.  Again not a curved format.  Look how straight the verticals are on the right, but the paper was a little curvy at the top left, (well, in the lower right of the camera, but you know what I mean), so more pinhole fun.

One of the neat things about the square format, depending on which side the camera is sitting on, you can have both a rising/falling option and a right/left shift.  Here's the short square format with a rising front and a shift to the right, this time with the paper really flat in the camera and nicely square to the opposite wall.

I know you're thinking that there's no place to put a camera over there. If you look at the first picture, hanging over the doorknob is a headband Sarah uses to keep her hair back while she washes her face.  The camera is hanging in that.

I did these with three separate cameras, often making exposures at the same time.  In the photo from the door knob, you can see the camera sitting on the toilet seat (it wouldn't stay level near the edge of the beveled cover), Again the short square with a rising front and a shift right.

Short curved panorama with the rising front. The camera was laying on it's back on the tile surround and was kind of jammed between the wall and the tub.

Long rectangle with the on-axis pinhole.  Camera was sitting on the corner of the tub.  Looks like it got bumped, but it makes for a bit of dynamism. Pinhole fun, eh?

The short rectangle with the on-axis pinhole.  Nice bit of resolution test with the pouf made from netting. How about them instant, larger than optimum pinholes?

Now you're thinking, wait a minute, that's from the middle of the tub, there's no place to put a camera.  It was supported by a stack of the stand from the toilet brush with the Kleenex box sitting vertically on top of it - here portrayed by a short vertical rectangle with the rising front, behind it on the bottom of the tub, this time with the camera tilted up a little.

I needed two tries to get the closeup.  I had a little code of placing a bit of tape on the outside of the camera so I knew what format it was loaded with.  The first time on top the stack it looks like I forgot to change it.  This exposure is with the negative in the back of the camera as for a long rectangle, but exposed by the on-axis pinhole on the short side.  I think a sunbeam may have been reflected in the shiny Kleenex box.

Many beginning pinholers will choose the ground for their camera support, so here, for them, is a short vertical rising front, with the camera right level on the floor, without the floor filling the lower half of the composition.

And to finish, another large short curved panorama, with the on-axis pinhole, with the camera lying on it's back on the floor.

I have to say I didn't have any surprises from the camera, they were kind of fun to use, I think it showed some of the possibilities it offers, and I like these pictures.