Workshop rehearsal & choices

In about a week, I'll be conducting a workshop in Madison, building a Populist and exposing a roll of film with it. One of the instructional strategies I favor is rehearsal, such as dry fitting parts before covering them with glue or taking a camera only loaded with backing paper, then previsualizing, viewfinding, adjusting your tripod, and winding as though it were real film. Taking my own advice, I tried out a few things, also to reassure myself that it's all going to work.

We're going to make a 30mm, 90° angle of view, 6x6cm Populist. What a lot of people think of as the "look" of pinhole photography is actually this sort of extreme wide angle view. Easy to do with pinhole, but until recently was very expensive to do with a lens, although my iPhone can match it now. In case the weather is overly gloomy, it's fast for pinhole at f130. It's also a brain bender to previsualize practically your entire field of vision as a 2D photograph without an optical viewfinder. Letting people choose an angle of view ended up being a little confusing in previous groups. 

I made the camera in under two and a half hours. It's pretty straight forward, especially with premade workshop parts. I got four pinholes in the appropriate range out of five. I'm always impressed how easy it is to make a camera that's as good photographically as any you can buy. Give it a coat of Liquitex and it's almost as durable.

One of my objectives was to decide on a developer. Because it takes over an hour, my beloved semi-stand developing method isn't an option, so I needed to experiment with normal agitation.  

I like the idea of caffenol, which is mixed from supermarket ingredients, for it's "maker" vibe and low impact on the waste stream. We could mix a bucketful at once, but then everybody would have to be ready at the same time. It takes 15 minutes to develop. The other option is Rodinal 1:25. The liquid stock solution is immortal, it mixes instantly, and you can use it at high dilutions, although we don't have time for that. This dilution is only seven and a half minutes.

The conditions for taking photographs might range from interior lights to brilliant sunshine. For film, I had already chosen Kentmere 400, for its speed, economy, wide latitude and what Ilford claims is the same reciprocity profile of other Ilford films - just one and a quarter times the measured exposure longer than a second (that is, almost always for pinhole photographs). 

Another thing I was concerned about was overexposure in bright conditions. Waving a black card in front of the pinhole with a human hand takes almost a 1/3 of a second, which is overexposure on a sunny day. I was pretty careless about doing short exposures with these two rolls to check that out.

The EyePA 30 got the caffenol assignment. (One doesn't have a favorite camera, right?) I had always heard that caffenol might cause base fogging in ISO 400 films. There was a post on the caffenol blog about ISO 400 film that recommended the STD recipe, which doesn't use any restrainer like potassium bromide or salt, which I've seen previously specified for fast emulsions. I used that formula and the negatives look pretty normal to me.

Off to Lake Winnebago to see what the ice is up to. In the morning, on the west shore, it's a challenge to keep the sun from shining on the pinhole with this wide-angle a camera. Here, using the trick of putting the camera in the shadow of a tree branch.

Tilted down a bit to get under the sun.

The ramp out to the ice on Merrit Avenue is closed, so people are hauling their huts right over the beach.

This hut with the wheels on the sides shows the holes in the bottom. I think the round ones are for fishing and the rectangular one for sturgeon spearing season, the size of which is specified by the DNR.

The lake ice was pretty thick, but here at the end of Ames Point is some open water.

Looking back north along the breakwater.

When the ice finally breaks up, huge shoves usually accumulate on the Yacht Club harbor wall, but there's not much now.

Two weeks later, I again set out to finish the film. I got to the railroad tracks just as a train was approaching so I rode around the block and found these brilliant white doors in the sunshine,

There was still ice, but getting very thin on the lake. Most of Miller's Bay was open water. There was a group of stalwarts still fishing toward the more protected south end of the bay.

A clear spot which was the site of the Polar Plunge a month ago.

Grrrrr! Only 10 pictures. Two were ruined when the shutter came open pulling the camera out of my pocket. Additional resistance has been added behind that shutter handle.

So the new Woven Wheats camera came out of the other pocket.  This roll was developed in Rodinal 1:25.

Walking down the dock, I noticed this odd scene in the ice. There's a clear layer of about 10cm at the top, then foggy but translucent for another 10cm. There are random clear holes through which the bottom is visible. Echoing the shapes of the holes are rings of bubbles at the top of the ice. This was also a challenging camera support situation. The tripod legs were completely extended but folded flat lying on the dock. The camera was extended as far as I could reach, and I was sitting on the tripod or it would tip over onto the ice. Surprisingly, I got the shutter opened and closed without moving the camera.

The pine trees still on the ice that used to mark the roads and cracks seemed to echo the small rock placed on top the boulder.

My intention was to capture the unusual vertical ice shove just off shore, but this time the angle to the sun was perfect to capture a reflection off the edge of the pinhole.

One of the former freight doors on the track side of the old train station. (Guilty admission: no rising pinhole on this camera, but you can accomplish nearly the same thing by cropping off the bottom.

Another composition determined by the need to keep the verticals parallel without a rising front, this time with the whole negative. It's hard to avoid including the camera's and your own shadow in the foreground when facing away from the sun this early with such a wide angle camera. Recently, I read a comment by RSS's James Guerin where he praised YouTuber Will Gudgeon for including his shadow in an image. Looking at that shadow for a while, it almost seems like you're viewing me from behind. Interesting bit of hand waving to make the exposure as well.

Et tu, Brutalism?

Riverside tables and chairs in a winter jumble.

I should probably check with some dimmer light to see about that reciprocity adjustment.  Diffuse light in our north-lit bedroom.

A sunbeam on the soap dish.

Sun beams in the Sunroom.

Very close up to a new cactus in the kitchen window. I didn't quite capture its translucence. The pinhole must be OK, because the screen is well resolved if you zoom in.

More north light on the dining room table.

Once again, I'm impressed how nice, light and easy to use the Populist is. There are a lot of weird and marginally balanced things I do with the tripod you'd never get away with using a heavier camera. Knocking over your Hasselblad is going to be an expensive tragedy. I'll bet I did it four or five times with these two rolls and the cameras are unmarked.

There doesn't seem to be much difference in the two developers. Those sunny scenes are pretty dense negatives but there wasn't much heavy blocking up of highlights. I may wait until the last minute to choose. If participants come back early for developing, we can take the time for the caffenol, if we're rushed, Rodinal would save a few minutes.

Both cameras have hand-drilled .23mm pinholes, 30mm from a 6x6cm frame.

There's still room in the workshop if you're available on March 22nd.