When it was my turn to choose material for the demonstration camera for the Pre-Pinhole Day workshop at Photo Opp, I picked the generally black carton with high-contrast elements from yet another of Lakefront Brewery's offerings, Riverwest Stein Amber Lager.
Prototype of a Compact 30mm · A modification of the film transport in the Evil Cube and Compact 45 · A Hazy Rabbit and the Bars on North Main Street
The first step is laying out the template on the cardboard to be sure you have enough for every part, and if possible, using specific parts of the design that will be visible on the finished camera. I repeatedly mentioned that the template will be adhered to the other side.
Despite the area covered by the front and back, the most noticeable parts of the exterior are the two shutters and the WinderMinder. Since they're smaller, you have more options for what to use. I demonstrated rough techniques for placing the template where you wanted it on the other side, after turning the cardboard over.
Then I peeled the release paper off the front and back and publicly adhered them to the side with the printing on it. Sigh.
I don't remember what I did with the pinhole I drilled in the workshop, and installed one from my stash the next day.
Until the day before Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day, it was uncertain that we would even be having an event since no one had signed up yet. I didn't know if anybody had bought any film, but I had stocked up for the workshops, so I wasn't concerned. When we started on Sunday, Char Brandis and I discussed whether to use my film or the only ISO 400 Black and White film in the refrigerator, Ilford XP2 Super 400. It had expired over two decades ago, but had probably been frozen since then in some professional's studio. No one had tried it. I shot one roll of XP2 in 1981 when it hadn't existed long enough to be expired. We went with the fresh film, but I couldn't leave 20 rolls of unknown film go untried.
It's designed to run through a professional one-hour C41 lab that used to be on every other street corner instead of getting out messy regular black and white chemistry. I've known for years that you could develop C41 films as black and white negatives with standard developers. The almost universal recommendation for development of outdated or unknown film is stand development in Rodinal 1:100. I do have a C41 kit mixed, but
I recently experienced extreme background fogging with outdated film in C41, so I went with the Rodinal. The negatives are, after all, the metallic silver before it gets bleached out and replaced with dyes in C41. There's a lilac cast to the film, but otherwise they look normal
Let's get the nagging question out of the way, what happens if the camera is under the kitchen table and the shutter falls off which you don't notice for a couple of hours, and then point the camera in the other direction while you stretch around the table legs to pick up the shutter and stick it back on the camera?
Can it handle the shutter coming open when you pull it out of your pocket?
The theme for the Fox Valley Photography group this month is
Close Up Encounters/Macro. We did this one only a few years ago, but I think it bears revisiting. Until the automatically focused digital prestidigitation of tiny lenses we're used to today, close-up photography was a complex affair involving special or extra equipment and often exposure equations, since your meter might no longer be coupled. With pinhole, of course, you just get closer.
Our friend Gene Leisz's Toad Witch has an incredible peaceful yet majestic expression. Extreme wide angle portraiture is often discouraged, mostly because the expansion of depth gives a fun house extension to one's nose. That's not so noticeable if you don't have much of a proboscis but, in addition to the slightly down angle I needed to use to include her conical hat, it seems to add a touch of melancholy.
The detailed contents of her basket.
Some shiny elements on the bookcase.
A heroic little bunny holding up a candle.
Sunbeams just keep falling on bouquets around here.
Regal expressions in the curio cabinet. The evening sunbeam was illuminating this shelf, but mostly had moved away from the Queen. I left the shutter open to try to get some fill after the very short-lived sunbeam had left. I forgot about it until sometime the next afternoon.
Better go out into the sunshine for some of my human-hand overexposures. A nice selection of shades of grey behind the Barley & Hops pub.
I keep expecting to find a coded message in the seemingly random cement-filled blocks in this window.
There's probably a symbolic message in this labyrinth adjacent to the downtown Mosque.
Oh, yeah, the Shapes theme was last month.
This film seems absolutely brand new to me. I vaguely remember back in the 80's thinking that the highlights blocked up, but I don't see any of that here. Maybe I'll try some more of it and use the C41.
Rive Iber Lage has a .22mm pinhole 30mm from a 6x6cm frame.
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