Oh, you mean the short of it with the Variable Cuboid

I didn't mean to be deceptive in my last post by describing 35mm as the short of the Variable Cuboid. Among commercial sellers of 6x6cm pinhole cameras, that is considered far from the pinhole, and there is an even shorter option for the Variable Cuboid - 20mm. At 113 degrees, 30 degrees wider than the 35mm. It's just a hair wider than all those cameras available for purchase. Let's see what that looks like.

Three of my pieces from the No Kings event were in a group show, Main Street, at The Art Garage in Green Bay. I went to the opening. Still cool to see one of my cameras on a sculpture stand.

Hors d'oeuvres and one of those "You'll be a blur but your friends will recognize you" conversations.

Even in the bright front gallery, exposures were long enough to make it a challenge to capture the sparse crowd. The Director and I are the mists on the lower right, having a conversation about seeing how time is recorded in long exposures is one of the attractions of pinhole.

I have to give Dave Heim credit for pointing out this sunbeam in the back.

We didn't use anything from the compost barrel this year, but nonetheless got this extremely vigorous volunteer vine growing halfway across the lot. When I was looking at this, I thought the shadow of the tripod was almost completely blended with the vines, but it almost looks in the way in the picture.

Is it a ghost pumpkin? This one's about the size of an apple, but there's a few weeks of season left.

The new hospital by the river is nearing completion, including an accessible switchback leading down to the riverwalk. In case you were wondering, the exterior is all grey.

The Multicultural Education Center, one of three grand old houses on campus, has been renovated and renamed after an extremely accomplished alum who credits it with part of his success. It still houses multicultural student organizations, but there's no longer a big sign on busy Algoma Boulevard that people who fear loss of privilege get worked up about.

Backing the '99 Mustang out of the left-hand bay of our garage requires a precise turn to avoid the plantings at the corner of the porch. I thought the front was clear and was concentrating on the back. When I felt a bump, I thought something was under the car. Probably weakened by years of close calls, I had torn off the front bumper cover against the door frame. After some disassembly, I discovered the cover was fine, but a few things underneath that it attaches to had to be replaced. Of course, there were several videos on YouTube. The parts were easy to find and pretty cheap.

Nothing more complicated than a socket wrench and a screwdriver was required. Looks just like a 25-year-old car again.

Photo Opp put out a general call for labor one day. Based on my experience in libraries, I was tasked with rearranging the bookcases, which had been emptied for some construction on the wall. If I lived nearby, I would spend a lot of time looking through these. It's a really terrific collection.

In a related Mustang incident, I found a pair of clip-on sunglasses under the seat that I lost at least fifteen years ago. Along with my new little Orange 20RT amp, it's given me ideas about a YouTube character.

Confiteor

There are two confessions I must make. 

This was supposed to be a demonstration of the super-ultra-wide-angle view of the 20mm distance from a 6x6cm frame. Most of them are cropped.

113 degrees is really wide-angle and it's hard to be sure you're previsualizing what's actually in the frame. Often, I would concentrate on one side of the frame, usually the bottom, and let the other side fall where it may, which turned out to make an off-balance composition. Even the most tightly cropped is still wider than the 35mm front. Can you tell which ones are cropped?

The other issue is that every frame included three areas where something blocked the pinhole. (n.b. A light leak would be darker than the rest of the negative.)  The cropping managed a good bit of this, but I have somewhat clumsily retouched these, mostly with the clone tool. Did you notice? I tried to use the Content Aware Fill feature in Photoshop, and it was rubbish. 

By the way, this is a pretty dense negative, but I also darkened this image to enhance the flaws.

Although the pinhole looks like it is well clear of the tape, the shallow depth of field of the microscope reveals significant topography in the tape after years of existence. The angle of view is wide enough that a few edges and fibers of the tape impinged on the image.

The 20mm front of the Variable Cuboid has a hand-drilled .23mm pinhole. The film was Ilford HP5 semistand developed in Rodinal 1:100.