The cult of The Risen Pinhole

Here's more of my infatuation with rising front photography. More Oshkosh architecture, and this time all from the back of the buildings. I'm not just trying to be bleak. I try not to ride my bike on busy streets, so in a lot of places I'm looking across a parking lot on the streets a block on either side of Main Street.  I also snoop in passageways and alleys.

I seem to have a thing for junctions between buildings. Here, Merrill Elementary School joins its gymnasium.  The tripod is downslope a couple feet and I think I might have had the camera tilted a bit. The verticals look a little wonky. Still, it's a lot different than it would look with converging verticals. The building on the left is an addition that separated from the older building in the front of it and had to be repaired.  These walls might not all be plumb. For some reason this reminds me of a Bronze age fortified city wall.

The First National Bank Building - one of two notably tall buildings in downtown Oshkosh.  What I'm attracted to is this jumble of cuboids of various shades of grey, all carefully built at right angles to each other.  Seems only polite to keep the verticals parallel as possible. This one may have the verticals diverging, but I'm OK with a little of that. It gives it a bit of Looney Tunes character.

The intersection of the Oshkosh Northwestern and the Winnebago County Health Department (which was once Oshkosh B'Gosh). In my selfish photographer's heart, I love the sky reflecting in these perfectly smooth insulated mullionless windows stuck into the backs of these historic buildings. The vines do give it a bit of a rustic look.

Some rectangles at the new arena.

This one's not exactly architectural.  This bridge over a small inlet is where the new section of the Riverwalk on the south side of the river begins.  The old train tracks that used to run through downtown crossed the river here and they reused some of the iron.

And totally not architectural.  if I had pointed the camera up and if the tree was exactly in the middle there wouldn't be any converging verticals  but I think it does make a difference to have the off-center tree trunk perpendicular to the horizon by using the risen pinhole.

The above were done with the New Evil Cube. I was so taken with this rising front idea, I put a second pinhole and a new double shutter on the Moderately Telephoto Pinhole Camera in a Plain Brown Wrapper, so I could work with things a little farther away.

I had to point the camera up to get just the top of the Mainview Apartments, the other tall downtown building. I still used the risen pinhole. The verticals noticably converge a little, but it doesn't look like it's falling over backward.

I thought there was an interesting contrast of shades and textures in the back of the old Mercy Hospital, now a senior housing establishment. I think I tilted the camera up just a little this time to crop out the parking lot although everything's looking pretty parallel.

My partner in crime, Camera Casino, our local camera store.  They used to develop my color film, but now they send it to a lab in Neenah. While taking this picture, for only the second time ever, someone came over to me to ask what I was doing. He was a newly retired guy who was just starting to ride his bicycle around Oshkosh.

With these two rolls of film, I had some of the worse problems I've had in years with double exposures, under exposure and accidentally-opened shutters. I think I'm going to take these cameras out again and be more careful.  I have to get over this devotion to The Risen Pinhole though.

The first six with The New Evil Cube. .3mm pinhole 6cm from 6x6cm frame located 15mm above the axis of the film plane, with Kodak TMax 100.

The last three with The Moderately Telephoto Pinhole Camera in a Plain Brown Wrapper. .33mm pinhole 12cm from 6x6cm frame located 12mm above the axis of the film plane, with Ilford HP5.

Both developed in Rodinal 1:50

The ice recedes

Inspired by my walk across Lake Winnebago, and a maybe a little bit by Daphne Schnitzer's views of the Mediterranean, I've been keeping track of the ice as it recedes from the shore.

The ice is always thinner on Millers Bay with a rougher texture and puddles of water forming on surface as the ice melts.

Out on the Ames Point breakwater that encloses the north end of the bay, the ice looks much more solid on the lake, but with open spots right around the end of the point.

Looking back toward Oshkosh, there are open channels.

A week later, the north end of the bay looks like it's all open water, but the gulls standing on the surface betray the location of the remaining ice.

Just a hundred yards or so down the shore, the south end of the bay remains locked in ice.

Over on the actual lake shore, a Christmas tree marks where there had been an open crack, which seems to have healed, although the bridges have been removed and the roads abandoned for almost a month.

Looking out over the lake, you can still see the line of trees that marked the road receding into the distance.

Four days later, the lake was completely ice-free. I think I'd like to do some more work with the ice, but despite the forecast of a major winter storm over the next few days, it's going to have to wait until next year.

All with the Moderately Telephoto Pinhole Camera in a Plain Brown Wrapper, loaded with Ektar 100.

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"

Slightly distant domestics

With the Moderately Telephoto Pinhole Camera in a Plain Brown Wrapper.

In Eau Claire when we first lived together, we passed this alabaster Buddha in a store window on the way from our apartment to the Joynt. Sarah got it for me for my birthday.

You can tell from his hat that it's winter.

Glassware is a common assignment in photography class. Flirting with refraction here again.

Butter in a white dish. Not as common as eggs, but a popular food assignment in color photography class.

I can't unsee that face.

I seem to have a thing for squares lately.

Another tissue inspired composition.

Birthday roses.

Flowers just to brighten the table in January.

The cats' perch in the sun room windows.

Upstairs again. A calmer view of the bath products.

And, a sunny window.

All with the Moderately Telephoto Pinhole Camera in a Plain Brown Wrapper. .33mm pinhole 120mm from 6x6cm frame.  Portra 400.