Nutcracker in the Castle

Over the holidays, our local art museum, a mansion surrounded by gardens, decorates with a Nutcracker theme, complete with acting and ballet.

In November, The Populist needed more tape, and I couldn't find the New Glarus Populist, when one day I was going out and thought I needed a 35mm camera with me so I grabbed the vintage PrePopulist, which has a 24x50mm semi-panoramic format. It had for some reason been stripped of it's shutter. I ripped the shutter off a 24x96mm camera I wasn't likely to use again and taped it on to the PrePopulist.  As it turned out I didn't take any pictures that day. When I got home I added some new viewfinders, and I ended up just carrying that camera around for two months.

Just before The Paine took the Nutcracker down, Sarah and I went over there so she could unleash the D750 on the decorations.  I didn't expect to take any pictures. Tripods are not normally allowed except by advance arrangement, so it's a pretty tough assignment for pinhole.  However, for the Nutcracker, they place a book stand in each room opened to a page from the story which is interpreted by the room decorations.  Under the book is a small shelf.  Just big enough to put a table-top tripod on.

The dining room is the Land of the Sugar Plum Fairy.  Too bad you can't see the outrageous pile of sweets on the table.  There is kind of a pinhole treat though.  The curved chair back overlaying the mullions of the window and a silhouette of the cake toppers look for all the world like it's being distorted by a lens.

The Breakfast Room, a glassed in porch, is the Land of Snow, echoing the view outside.

Mrs. Paine's drawing room may have been the dance of the flowers.

Another pinhole treat. All these little tree lights are a great model for diffraction.  For you fans of Lord Rayleigh, here's a full resolution crop which depicts the Airy disks that those equations predict.  n.b. .15mm Gilder electron microscope aperture, 24mm from the film.

The Chinese Dance takes place in the Great Hall.  The camera this time is on a handrail.  The trees to the left are just barely perceptibly rotating.

Upstairs they give up the ballet pretext and characterize it as the Stahlbahm family home. They don't have the books anymore, but each room has a freestanding lecturn with some text about the room that will hold a desktop tripod. Here in the sitting room I think is where she may have gotten the Nutcracker.

The parents' bedroom.

Mom's closet.

On the stairway landing is Herr Drosselmeyer's workshop.

The Gothic gallery overlooking the garden was originally built as a place for musicians to entertain guests in the Great Hall behind it below, but it never got finished. Now it's full of built-in cases to display objects, containing - what else - nutcrackers.

All with the PrePopulist. .15mm pinhole 24mm from 24x50mm frame.

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.

Feeding and use of the Pinhole Lab Camera

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. 

One of the basic concepts of the Pinhole Lab Camera is that the negatives are even divisions of the most common photographic paper, 8x10 inches.  That also means you have to cut the paper - accurately - under safelight.

Original description link    Construction post link    Link to Templates

A paper cutter is a common thing to find in a darkroom, but not always, and it's a bit of an expensive thing to get. I cut paper by putting stripes of light colored tape on a cheap cutting mat at the distances from the edge I want to make cuts, in this case 2½, 4, and 6 inches, and cutting with a steel rule and a craft knife. Your risk management officer wants me to remind you that this could be dangerous. Put the knife inside some kind of box with a white interior so it doesn't roll around and you can see it under safelight. If you haven't done this much before, practice a little outside the darkroom. Safelights can be pretty dim so wait till you're dark adapted and make sure you can actually see what you're doing. Put the cut pieces of paper in a light tight container.

I may have given the impression with the slots and ridges that you just have to place the paper in, close the camera and it'll stay put. A moving camera gets jostled about quite a bit, and if the paper doesn't stay in place - no picture.

The solution, as my young students would tell you, is more tape.  Wrap a loop with the adhesive side out, and place it in the middle of the paper.

Then place it and press it down where appropriate for that format and give the camera a little shake to make sure that bit of tape keeps your negative in place.

These bits of tape should be considered consumables. They get misplaced in the darkroom easily and they don't last forever. I don't think they harm the chemistry much if forgotten during development, but you sure wouldn't want to use them with unexposed paper afterward.

For the 2½ inch distance, for both the square and rectangular formats, place the paper down toward the rectangular end of the camera and adhere it to the square side opposite the pinholes.

For the four inch distance, the paper goes in the Back.  The Back is slightly larger than the paper, so try to get it square when you place it there.  You might notice that the paper isn't perfectly flat.  The pinhole doesn't care, and that's all part of the fun, eh pinholers?  If that's a problem, the solution is, of course, more tape.

The curved formats are also attached with tape, again adhered at the center of the paper. Try to get the ends of the curves equal distance from the front of the camera.

I'm going to try to get the template so those ridges are a little closer to where they should be, but I wouldn't trust them to hold the paper in place while transporting the camera if they were the exact right size.

For the curve at the four inch distance, it's a slightly different process.  Again, put the tape in the center of the paper and adhere it down with equal ends of the paper sticking out of the Back.

Then squeeze the sides inward a bit, insert them into the box,  and place the Back of the camera on. (This really does look like I'm feeding it.)

 
Before closing the camera, check that the Pinhole Mount is still under the Pinhole Mount Lock.  If you had some black or red tape, it wouldn't hurt to tape it in place. It has a tendency to get popped out from under the Lock during particularly excitable closing of the shutter and rubbing it to make sure it adheres.

The tape for the shutters should also be considered a consumable, and as noted in the construction post, you should carry spares.

I've recently found a couple rolls of 3M plastic tapes that you might find available: Black Colored Plastic Tape (the people who named that must not have grown up in the South) and Decorator and Repair Tape.  They are lower tack than I remember but these rolls could be 10 years old.  I'm kind of liking them for shutters because the handle flaps tend to lie flat against the camera and out of the way.  The classic, of course, is opaque black photographic tape which is still available in a few brands.  If you want to splurge for this and get noticeably higher quality, you can get 3M #235, which is a truly iconic material, but it's going to cost you as much as all the other materials. n.b. I also found a couple old rolls of electrical tape that wouldn't stick to the cardboard at all.

One problem with using tape as a shutter is it's tendency to pull off fibers from the card stock both damaging the camera and reducing the adhesiveness of the piece of tape.  The solution to this is, of course, more tape.  By placing a layer of your cheap masking tape around the pinhole, you create a surface that is more forgiving of adhering and removing tape. You might even be able to use black duct or gaffers tape for shutters after making this modification if you could tear it accurately in these small pieces.

Viewfinding is done with the aid of our first accessory, a cardboard straight edge.  Because card stock has the tendency to curl, fold a piece the long way and clamp and glue to counteract that.  It's not steel, but if you're careful, you can keep it straight.

The idea is to align the straight edge with the mark you made of the location of the pinhole on the sides of the camera in the front and where the edge of the paper is in the camera at the back.  With some of the formats that's the corner of the box.  For the 2½ x 4 inch format at the 2½ inch distance, as illustrated below, it's the front side of the Light Trap. You could also place marks where the curves intersect the side of the camera.

If you sight down the straight edge so it looks just like a line, you can see where the limits of the image will be.  Previsualizing where you want those edges to be is part of the zen of pinhole thing. I think most photographers have some idea before they put the camera up to their eyeball, but it can be an odd thing for some people. (Pro tip: they're usually not as close as they should be.)

Of course since even the shortest of exposures is going to be fifteen seconds, the camera needs to be supported absolutely motionless.  The iconic place for this is on the ground, but I find it tiresome that this often fills half the frame with a featureless foreground of the pavement of the school parking lot. That rising front pinhole should help a little with that.

The ultimate support is a tripod, and we'll get to that eventually, but the rising and falling front give you a some pointing flexibility if you have a level place to set the camera.

You'd be surprised how many benches, tables, chairs, trees, information kiosks, refuse and recycling bins, planters and walls that are nice and level that you can support a camera on that gets the point of view off the ground. Place the camera right on the edge so you're not just substituting the featureless top of your support for the pavement.

Note you have to hold the camera down when you take the tape off and you're liable to move the camera a bit when you remove your hand.  With long exposures on a cloudy day that's not going to make much difference as long as you don't actually change where it's pointing. For shorter exposures  of fifteen to thirty seconds on sunny day, you can probably hold the camera down with your hand.

The camera is very light and susceptible to being blown away by the wind.  For longer exposures, unless you plan for a place to sit and rest your arm, most people can't keep from involuntarily wiggling and moving the camera if they try to hold it down for more than a minute.  In that case you could find something you had around that you didn't use very often and had a little heft to it that you could set on the Pinhole Lab Camera to hold it down.

A Pinhole Lab Camera

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. 

Preface

I have this fantasy of a pinhole class.  It could be a five day camp or a regular school class for several weeks. I think it would have to be at least junior high school, but it could be with senior citizens.  I'm really done with half day workshops. For those I always seem to end up spending all my time identifying light leaks and fixing them and it ends up just being a technical demonstration and nobody gets to play with pinhole photography.

I started getting really serious about pinhole when I worked with the university's science outreach department to create a program using pinhole photography as an example of physics and chemistry concepts.  I'd still like to include that sort of thing and I can imagine it being a supplement to a variety of science, art or general liberal studies classes, but I'd like it to concentrate on iconic experiences in pinhole photography, although a lot of this is going to inform one's practice of lensed photography.

Building your own camera from raw materials is one of the iconic experiences of pinhole photography,  I had a tenured History prof tell me last year that building a pinhole camera in Junior High School was one of the most memorable experiences of his education.

Links:    Construction    Feeding and Use    Link to Templates   Excusado  Reducer and extender

A New Camera
If I ever got the chance to do this extended curriculum, I've been developing the camera I think I'd use. (n.b. the cameras in the picture above are prototypes with minor variations)

In previous workshops I used a camera design I was given by Ruth Thorne-Thomsen.  It was pretty quick and easy to build and load. I had fourth graders successfully do it without much trouble. It was slightly prone to light leaks, but in predictable places and usually easy to fix with tape. One fifth grader who had been in a workshop as a fourth grader the year before remembered that most problems could be fixed with more tape. It could be built with several distances from pinhole to paper, but it was less confusing if they all made identical cameras and although I used to bring examples of shorter and longer cameras and let the kids use them, everyone didn't get to experiment. The design's biggest weakness is the dependence on a supply of black opaque photographic tape, which is a little expensive and has to be ordered from a photo or art supply house.

I also had kids build curved cameras out of La Choy Noodle cans because that non-flat film plane is so critical a concept in pinhole photography, but those plastic lids are irritatingly hard to make light tight.

For this new camera, I'm sticking with a one-shot camera loaded with photographic paper, for the budgetary aspects and for learning objectives. Timely feedback is a critical factor in learning, especially if it's matched to a protocol where you try to predict (or imagine) how something will work out. Having to go back to the darkroom gives the student just enough time to wonder about that sort of thing but it's short enough to remember what they did before finding out if it worked.

It's the same printed-template-glued-to-cardboard-and-folded-and-glued-together concept as most of my other cameras.

The new camera has multiple formats that would allow each participant to experiment with several parameters:

• pinhole to film distance (what would be focal length on a lens), 
• aspect ratio and film size, 
• adjusting the field of view by changing where the pinhole is in relation to the center of the film plane (rising and falling front) and 
• curvature of the film plane.  

It's also set up so the size of the pinhole could be changed easily.

Formats:

It's designed around a format of 2½ x 4 inches (64 x 102mm).

The basic concept is that's an even division of an 8 x 10 inch (20.3 x 25.4cm) sheet of paper - one eighth.

In almost every school environment budget is going to be an issue.

That may seem a little small, but it's bigger than 6x9cm on 120 film or Instax prints.

It's aspect ratio - 5:8 - is just a hair wider than 35mm's 2:3 and it's pretty close to the 9:16 screen most people spend a lot of time looking at on laptops and HDTV.

An advantage for my lab camera is the ratio is great enough that the dimensions of a box to accommodate that shape, if you put a pinhole on two sides, can have two distinctly different pinhole to film distances with all the f-ratio, angle of view, vignetting and perspective of depth principles that implies.

The box is approx. 4 x 4 x 2½ inches. That allows 4 inches to the pinhole on the rectangular end (34.5 x 52 degrees - about a 35mm 35mm equivalent), and 2.5 inches with the pinhole on the square side. (53.5 x 77 degrees, about a 23mm 35mm equivalent).

For the 2½ inch pinhole distance, I put the pinhole and the paper toward the end opposite the opening so it would be easy to load accurately in the darkroom.

For the 4 inch distance the paper would go in the removable cover. I can hear you thinking how that is just an invitation to a light leak. The body includes a light trap the cover fits into, which I'll detail later on.

Of course by turning the camera on it's side you also have vertical options.

Since you've got a four inch square available on the short side of the camera, if you put an extra pinhole right in the middle of that side, you've got a 4 x 4 inch square format.

I know I've just blown the even divisions of an 8 x 10 sheet of paper, but if you're going to make contact prints (an iconic pinhole experience) you'll need lots of test strips, and who says you can't just put a 2 inch negative in if you want to. (What would that do to the angle of view?)

Curved film planes and panoramic formats are other critical concepts in pinhole photography.

If you put a little ridge on the side of the camera a half inch from the front, a 2½ x 6 inch piece of paper held between the camera back and those ridges forms very close to a 2½ inch radius curve.

You could also do this with a 4 x 6 inch piece of paper.

Now,  make sure your half inch ridge is only 2½ inches high and put another ridge across the 2½ inch side, 1½ inches down the back. If you place a 2½ x 6 inch piece of paper between those ridges and the camera back,  you've got kind of an odd curve varying from about 2¼ to 4 inches. That's definitely not the perfect radius which is kind of expected of a curved film plane camera.  And the pinhole says: "I don't care, it doesn't matter how far from the film plane I am, it just changes the exposure."

This would be kind of interesting math to see if the increasingly reduced area of the foreshortened ellipse of the pinhole as you view from the side would compensate for the technically faster f-ratio at the sides.

Even with this elongated format, you can turn it to vertical.

Rising and falling front.

The entire image cast by the pinhole and how the image appears when cropped to different parts of that circle is a concept easily explored in pinhole photography. If you have view camera experience, I'm speaking here of rising and falling fronts.

Just quickly, if the pinhole is above the center of the film plane, it will somewhat appear that the camera is getting a higher point of view.  Since pinhole is all about straight lines it's easy to demonstrate that you're looking in a different direction.  Since no focusing is going on it doesn't matter that this might be in a different plane. The pinhole doesn't care. Again, exposure will vary across the image, and you may see some vignetting, but those are easily managed variabilities that can be handled in making the positive. Probably the most common use of this function is to photograph a tall building without tilting the camera back so it doesn't look like it's falling over backward. If the camera is level, the apparently higher angle of view will still have parallel verticals. Another place you'd like to use this is landscapes with those curved film planes where you want to keep the horizon level so the distortion of the curved film plane isn't so distracting.  You can change where that horizon is in the composition with a rising or falling front. (Are you thinking Rule of Thirds?)

If you make another pinhole above the one in the middle, that's just like a rising front. If you've got the rising front extra pinhole, if you turn the camera over, it's a falling front. By the way, the axial pinhole of the 4 inch square is the rising/falling pinhole of the 2½ x 4 inch format, and vice versa.

Here are the three variations of the 2½ x 4 inch format at 2½ inches.

Rising front.

The on-axis pinhole.

And with the camera turned over, the falling front.

By taking a rising and falling front picture from the 4 x 4 inch and pasting them together you can get a 4 x 5½ inch format.

And of course you can do it with verticals, and the curved film planes, or shift to the left and right rather than up and down.  There's over a hundred variations.

Each one of these apertures would have a separate piece of tape as a shutter (which is another iconic pinhole experience).

Six Pinholes?

If we do this for both distances to the pinhole for both vertical and horizontal, that makes six pinholes. I can just hear you thinking: "Wait a minute, Nick, you're going to have these kids drill six pinholes?"  I propose making .5mm pinholes by completely piercing thin metal to the diameter of a #10 quilting needle. My reason is that it's so easy. I have never encountered someone who couldn't make a nearly perfect .5mm pinhole.  I've only seen about three that required a second try (Drill - don't just push).  This includes kids as young as third grade.

Here are a .5mm Gilder electron microscope aperture and the six pinholes I made in under ten minutes that were used to make the pinhole images in this post.

I know that this is larger than the calculated optimum for both pinhole distances we're working with but it's the smallest sewing needle I can find. I think the ease of making them and the predictability of the aperture supersedes the need for the "sharpest" pinhole possible.  I don't think "as sharp as possible" should be an objective of a beginning pinhole class. This is a chance to explore the pinhole aesthetic.

I know about micro-drills and electron microscope apertures, but drilling a pinhole with a needle is probaby the most iconic pinhole experience.

These oversized pinholes also have the advantage of speed.  At 2½ inches it's f127 and the 4 inch option is f203.  With photographic paper, we're looking at sunny day exposures of between 15 and 30 seconds, and cloudy day exposures of 2 to 5 minutes. I've never had problems with people dealing with long exposures, but let's just say you can get more done with shorter exposures.

The camera design includes mounting the pinholes on a removable holder, so if you have students who can deal with the extra trouble of drilling and measuring smaller pinholes, or slits, or zone plates, it's easy to change them to experiment, and you don't have to change all six at once.

The sun is a vengeful benefactor

Most bad experiences in a pinhole workshop are caused by light leaks from the sun sneaking through the joint where you open the camera to load paper or film.

When I made the moderately telephoto camera in a plain brown wrapper, and I cut down the camera back to make it easier to open, it occured to me if I cut a strip off the part I removed and glued it to the front box right up against the closed back, and then glued a strip with an overhang over it that the camera back would slide under, I would have a pretty reliable light trap that was easy to open and close.  Cutting off part of a box after it's been glued together is a bit of a hassle, so I added a separate part to accomplish this.

Quandaries

It takes some time and careful work to make. This camera requires proper glueing to stay together, and that means you have to wait for a while between at least four steps.  With Aleens Fast Drying Tacky Glue, I made one in around three hours working nearly continuously, letting parts dry while I cut out and folded the next part.  With regular white school glue you'd want those drying periods to be several hours.  Aleens Fast Drying glue costs four times as much as school glue.

It takes a 12 inch square of cardboard for the largest part. Only the largest economy size of breakfast cereal when opened flat is big enough, and 24 and 30 packs of canned beverages work.  Poster board from art supply stores or Walgreens for that matter come in 22 x 28 sheets that would be more than adequate for a camera (Get black).

It can all be done with scissors except for cutting out the holes for the pinholes which have to be done with a craft knife. Craft knives are dangerous.  How young a kid can you trust with an Xacto knife? I have used hollow point punches to make these holes, but they take a pretty good whack with a mallet to cut the hole.  Paper and card stock don't tolerate drills very well.

Is it all too much?  Would students just be bewildered? Some might, but if they can figure out video games, none of this should be too hard, and it's all reinforced by hands-on/minds-on experience with the concepts.

I'm wondering how long it would be before they came up with this:

or this:

I think I've got the template worked out now, and I'm working on a post on building and using the camera.

I'd love to hear some feedback.