Thin Lizzy

I've been saving this Guiness six-pack carton for some time.  I intended to make a 35mm camera to take on our trip to Europe, but something else got in the way, and I ended up taking another camera to carry in my pocket.

Although most of my cameras are somewhat wide-angle, I've shied away from the extreme end, mostly because I dislike vignetting, but that's kind of a limiting attitude, so this seemed like an opportunity to use the Guiness packaging.  A six pack doesn't really have enough cardboard to make much of a long camera, so it was a natural to go shorter. Supper Club Shorty brought me down to 35mm, so I did this one at 30mm - a 90 degree angle of view on a 6x6cm format.  I have made one camera this short before, but it had other issues.

The design is the same on both sides, but on the rear shutter, I lost the little round piece I cut out of the harp, so I thought the most appropriate substitution was the Art from Arthur Guiness's signature.

The winders are my standard 3/8 inch dowels whittled to fit in the slot of a 120 reel.  Because I like the look and the extra torque for winding I glued them into some cut-off cork stoppers.  The problem with this scheme is that the winders are only held in because they fit tightly into the slot.  The problem arises because different film manufacturers have different size slots.  If the winder fits tightly into the narrowest, it will fall right out of the widest.  The answer is that most pinholey of solutions, more tape. I place several layers of tape over the tab until it fits very snuggly into the slot and stays reliably put.

Otherwise it's a standard 120 Populist.

The optimal pinhole size for this distance to the film is .231mm.  After drilling several holes closer to .3, I quit when I got one at .20 that looked pretty good.  That makes it f150.

I loaded it with Lomography 400 to try it out. I was surprised the vignetting didn't bother me that much.

The wide angle lets me get the entire fern stand in the dining room window without moving the dining room table.

One issue with extreme wide-angle is that if the camera isn't perfectly square with the subject it's particularly noticeable.

I did a little better this time.

One of my pet peeves with extreme wide angle cameras is that people don't get close enough to fill the frame.  You really have to get right in there with things.

Some times you get too close.  When I pulled open the shutter, it hit the subject and pushed it back a bit..  After a few seconds, I decided to stick the knife into the now empty foreground.

Buddha's corner following the post-Yule transition.

Sitting in my usual work space writing out a shopping list with a freshly baked loaf of bread and five pinhole cameras.