Pinholica: Coco Neige

The last Populist template with the new internal structure that needed to be checked was the 60mm.

Occasionally we receive an issue of 31 Rue Cambon, Chanel's semi-annual journal. This one's cover was made from unusually thick and stiff cardstock with a penetrating gaze prominenty featured. In the past in order to spread an image across the whole front of the camera, it took two copies, one for the camera body, and one for the shutter. We only received one copy of this issue. If the shutter covered the entire front of the camera, I realized it would be simple to make the cutouts for the shutter and shutter handle and keep the image whole.

The camera back used a similar scheme with the inside back cover giving the camera a name. In the snowy springtime in Wisconsin it seemed appropriate.

A rather extravagant material. These magazines can go for twenty bucks on eBay.

Followers of the Lensless Podcast Facebook group may recall me recently expressing wonderment at how easy it was to drill an almost perfect .30mm pinhole by hand. That was the one for this 60mm camera, which is extremely long in the pinhole world, but is actually moderately wide angle: 53 degrees. It's a mystery to me why almost all pinhole cameras for sale are of the ultra-wide 90 to 120 degree angle of view. There are probably two reasons. Perfectly rectilinear ultra-wide angle lenses weren't even available until the 1950s and were always rare and very expensive until the iPhone made them ubiquitous. The other oft cited reason is that the equations for diffraction demonstrate that shorter distances to the image plane show better optimal performance (ergo "sharpness") overall, and at faster f ratios. Working at f200 isn't all that big a deal with ISO 400 film, and you'll have to be the judge whether the images are too soft.

The last two cameras made from Chanel materials produced posts featuring Chanel products, but I've sort of exhausted those that are locally available. I carried this camera around for a month looking for an appropriate use before finally being inspired by this month's theme for the Fox Valley Photography Group.

It's a two part concept. First, go to an unfamiliar place and find many different pictures to take in the space around you. A coffee shop was used as an example. Then display nine of those in a 3x3 grid.

I would draw a lot of attention trying to do this in a public place, and most likely be in the way. At home I could probably find nine photographs I've already done of each room. Sarah's studio is one place I don't spend much time in. When I go in to borrow the Nikon or some other tool, I always end up getting distracted looking at some artifact on display. It was the perfect inspiration for both the camera and the challenge.

In addition to it being a pretty tight space for a tripod, it's a bit dim for pinhole. I had seen the small, practically weightless, inexpensive USB powered LEDs that can be mounted on a camera's accessory shoe. Not a lot of light in the pinhole world, but I was planning on using it rather close up. It was a little harsh so I attached a milk bottle for a diffuser to it with rubber bands, and mounted it on a boom mic stand so it could be positioned from behind the tripod. That reduced the exposures from an hour and a half to five or ten minutes, although a few were long exposures with just the room lights.

The shelves are full of objet d'art and artist's supplies.