The Populist: variations sans pattern

What makes the Populist "a camera that anyone can make" is probably the printed pattern, but the basis of the design is the front box with chambers on the side for the film reels, and the back which slides over the front, which makes for a nice, light-tight enclosure.

I've made a couple variations just by measuring the parts out without using a printed pattern. 

I mentioned in the post about the Glenmorangie Evil Cube that Sarah had given me a bottle of scotch for Christmas with the sentiment that she chose it because it looked the most like you could make a pinhole camera out of the box.

Scotch does generally come in some pretty sturdy boxes, and in this case, I really just used it as cardboard with a few folds already in the right place, and of course, I wanted the design on the box to look like it was made for the camera.

The width of a box of Scotch is just greater than the size of a 120 reel, so I added some foamcore spacers to get it right. The other dimension can be adjusted, but there really wasn't enough material to make a 6x9 and keep the pinhole where I wanted it on the design, and I think I've mentioned my inner cheapskate freaking out about only getting 8 pictures out of a role of 120 film, so it's 6x6cm.

The distance to the pinhole was again determined by how much cardboard I had while keeping the design of the box in place, which turned out to be 45mm. I used a .3mm Gilder electron microscope aperture, which is about the ideal size according to Mr. Pinhole.

I used it to photograph a gift I gave to Sarah that Christmas. 

And of me rocking out in the basement.

A couple years later I got it out again to make Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day special, and submitted another variation on one of my favorite themes.

Last summer as part of my renewed interest in larger formats, I again loaded it up and set out to start a series on historic places in Oshkosh.  Here's Oaks Candy, established in 1884.  I had to buy a bunch of candy to justify taking up space in their store for this shot, but that's the price you pay for art.

I've always been fascinated with portrait painting.  The poses required for sketching from life seem like something that could accommodate pinhole exposure times.  A few years ago, my instructional media department inherited a photographic studio very near my office when the Publications department got one built near their main offices in another building.  In my hopes for taking advantage of this, I built this 4.5 x 6 cm camera with a vertical format as it was mounted on the tripod which is a typical format for a portrait with a 6 cm distance to the pinhole yielding a relatively "normal" perspective to reproduce what a painter would be seeing with their eyes, although still a little wide for what we might consider for lens portraiture.

I never did get the guts to ask anyone to pose for me in the studio, except for that most convenient and cooperative model.

I did use it for a bit in the garden.

With both of these cameras I had problems with the film jamming up about the 9th or 10th frame.  I thought it was because the film reels got out of parallel and bound up, but I've had the film smoothly go through in both at other times, and I never had a problem with the 120 Populist or the Stereo 120 Populist.  I think it might have something to do with not advancing the film far enough on the take-up reel before I put it in the camera.  On subsequent 120 cameras, I've been putting a second winder and some little axle in the bottom of the reel to make sure they remain parallel.

Sometimes problems lead to serendipity though.  When I was working on the Portrait camera I was dealing with the worst personnel conflict of my career and took this face-palm shot just as I had read an email from one of the participants right after I got home from work. (Career advancement tip: Don't email the boss about problems right after work) The camera was in the process of jamming and after a series of aggressive twists just barely getting it to advance, I think it must have squeezed the film so hard it left these red marks on the image which I think enhanced the impression of frustration in the picture. I used it as my Facebook profile picture for about a year.

Old frozen film and caffenol.

In my last post, I mentioned how I had sort of a reawakening of my interest in black and white about the same time I started working in color, but color won the day and I gave up the monochrome.

Several things have recently renewed my interest in black and white.  

All the while I've been using the Populist I occasionally built 120 cameras, often just to demonstrate that my cheap homemade paper cameras could produce just as good photographs as expensive, beautifully crafted wood and brass cameras you could buy. Most of the time I just wasn't that impressed by the difference the larger format made, but recently I've gotten intrigued by it. I kinda wanted to try the Compact 120 6x9 again but my inner cheapskate, however, kind of drew the line at the 6x9cm format as just too expensive to be fun.

Before I quit using the black and white, I bought 10 rolls of black and white 120 film.  I still had a roll of T-Max, one of Tri-X and four of Arista 400 in my freezer. I don't think my inner cheapskate would be offended if I used them up in the Compact 120.

Also recently I was reminded of caffenol developer. If you haven't heard of it, it's ingredients are washing soda, vitamin C, and cheap instant coffee.

Making your own chemistry is about as pinholey as it gets, but caffenol also has other advantages. Although the washing soda wouldn't be very good for you if you drank it, everything in caffenol is pretty non-toxic and something that is pretty safe to pour down the sink (I mean, it's washing soda).   Hydroquinone and Metol are some pretty nasty stuff.  In normal home usage quantities it's not all that bad to dump regular developer in the drain, but caffenol is less of an issue. And it smells a lot better.

The really big advantage is it's a one shot developer mixed from powder every time.  Liquid developers oxidize pretty fast, and there's always a warning with powders to mix the whole envelope. Since I only develop a roll of film now and again I hate the idea of not knowing if my developer is still full strength.

So I started with the T-Max since the caffenol.org web site said it was tested pretty well.  I used the standard Delta recipe, since there was a post on the site that said it worked well with T-Max.  I didn't notice until now that the writer said they doubled the amount of vitamin C.

For one of those things that don't sound like they could possible work, it actually developed the film, but with a few problems.

Here are three pictures. I always have trouble just shooting to test, so I went for a bike ride along the old manufacturing district on the Fox River, which seemed pretty appropriate to black and white.

The historical society has kept two fishing shacks preserved.  Manufacturers in Oshkosh paid workers particularly poorly to gain a competitive advantage, which led to a nasty strike in 1898, so the workers depended a lot on fishing in the Fox for food.

I love this side walk.  This used to be the road between Mercury Marine's Engineering Test Lab, still there on the left, and Radford Manufacturing, one of the wood products companies that Oshkosh was built upon, which was torn down sometime in the early nineties.  The streets in the area have been reworked several times since then. The street lights, power poles and fire hydrants were installed at different times, and when they decided to put this sidewalk in, it was cheaper to snake it around everything rather than move them.

This is the site of Morgan Door Company.  This Old House actually did two remote segments there. They moved out to the industrial park about ten years ago, the old factory was torn down, and the site has remained vacant since.  I thought it was funny to have these two piles of gravel there since the city spent years getting a construction materials supplier just across the river to move out of the downtown.

The negatives turned out all right, but the background fogging is pretty bad.   On the caffenol site there are several warnings that you might need a restrainer with faster films, but they're divided between those that say you're OK up to 400, and some saying 400 and over.

I think I'm with the 400 and over crowd.  Luckily, common table salt is one of the options for a restrainer, so I think I'm going to add that next time.

Unfortunately, there's no mention of Tri-X or Arista 400 at all on the Caffenol site, but they do refer to Ilford HP5 and the recommended development times are roughly similar. Anyone have any tips on using caffenol?