Pinhole Wisconsinably

 

Everybody thinks of the lumber of the north as the early economic driver of Wisconsin, but lead mining in the southwest was the first profitable industry to make the state's reputation. American badgers (Taxidea taxus) are a native species all across the state, but no more than the rest of the western half of the continent. Going underground to get lead is what made us Badgers.

Potosi Brewing is particularly situated to claim this heritage. The volcanism associated with a tectonic plate collision 2.8 billion years ago pumped up lots of minerals in the region. It's located in the Driftless Area, where no glaciers passed to push everything into Illinois, so the lead was still available to make shot and some of the pipes we had replaced this past year.

This is part of an ongoing project to cut out the parts of my cameras with a Cricut Explore 4 cutting machine. I'm not sure what the final objective is, but I'm trying to make a more finished-looking product, as well as more accurate and reliable. This is close. There are still a few errors resulting from being distracted overcoming a few stupid incompatibilities with Inkscape's SVG files, and Cricut Design's inconsistency in bringing those in at exactly 100%. It's been pretty good at cutting out the outside parts exactly where I wanted from the design.

At the workshop in DePere, Colette LaRue was giving away rolls of Ilford Pan F+ that had expired in 2021. At ISO 50, Pan F+ may seem to be a challenge for pinhole exposure times, but even on an overcast day, exposures are only about 20 seconds, and it brings sunny day exposures up to a manageable one second.

What could be more Wisconsinable than going to Menomonee Park to photograph the ice on Lake Winnebago? It was a sunny spring-like day at home, but 500 square kilometers of melting half-meter-thick ice changes the atmosphere and the light near the lake. I picked a fuzzy, asymmetrical tree along the shore to add to my series of the north inlet to Millers Bay.

The lake is the water supply for the city and a critical part of the storm sewer system. Every so often, a concrete pipe will be sticking out into the ice, or an anomalous spot of open water will be visible on the shore next to a small utility structure.

At the end of the T-dock, some holes drilled to evaluate the condition of the ice, and the last few stalwarts out on the bay.

A diverse group of leaves frozen into the ice.

Some of the ice trying to come ashore.

The ramp onto the lake at Merritt Avenue is still installed, but blocked. All the bridges over the cracks have been hauled in.

Riding down Bowen Street, I couldn't miss The Oshkosh Rhythm Institute, which organizes drum circles  "to promote wellness in our community through social music making." Hmmm. Community drum circles are from 7-9 pm on Wednesday, when the evening sun is shining into those big windows in the summer.

That drew my attention to other small-business storefronts scattered in the area, which is the oldest part of the city.  Kowboi Kitchen, Chicago style food.

A very large phone number, oddly emphasized in the internet age, featuring one of my typographical pet peeves: More space between the lines of type than there is from the edges of the sign. Baseline dots instead of x-height dashes is kind of 21st-century, though.

The address says Bowen, but this is the back entrance to Possum's Bait Shop and Antiques on Mill Street.

We're getting into the season where I can bike around the city, but the trees are still providing detailed shadows.

There will probably be more of this sort of thing.

These are 3800 pixels wide. I spend quite a bit of time looking at these at the 200% view, retouching dust, and I can't see grain at even that magnification. I deliberately overexposed about a stop because the film was so old, but it wasn't necessary. I've got another roll of it.

The Badgersette has two .25mm pinholes on the axis and 13mm above it, 30mm from a 6x6cm film plane. The film plane is the whole 6x6cm with the proper folds. The Pan F+ was semistand developed in really syrupy Rodinal from the bottom of the bottle, 1:100.

You knew I wasn't going to leave this alone.

The pattern of the light leaks from the Fashion Victim Camera was really odd. The top half of the image, which would have been at the bottom of the camera, was normally exposed. The bottom half, on top in the camera, was totally overexposed, divided by an unnaturally straight line for a light leak. If it had been unexposed, I could understand something getting in the way, but this was very strange for a light leak. Note the clear shape of a stray bit of tape blocking the film at the lower left of each frame. The answer finally occurred to me.

Many of my cameras have two pinholes, on the image axis, and a bit above it for limited rising front capability. Each pinhole is on a separate piece of brass. Because they're only 11mm apart, the brass has to be trimmed so one piece doesn't cover the pinhole on the other when they overlap. In this case, I got them trimmed so they just butted right up against each other, and didn't notice that it left a small slot between them when they were mounted.

On the inside, the opening is just a rectangle that accommodates both pinholes. Looks no different than the brasses overlapping, right?

What happened was that the gap between the brasses aligned with the top edge of the open area when the lower shutter was opened, creating what was essentially another aperture, though more of a slot and much bigger than the pinhole. When the shutter was opened, it created a very blurry and overexposed image in the upper half of the camera, obliterating the scene projected by the pinhole, and in the lower half, a practically unexposed image of the black back of the top shutter, leaving the pinhole image unaffected.

It had nothing to do with the translucent white card the camera was made out of, or the opacity of 3M #235.

The solution was simply another strip of opaque tape to cover that gap. On both sides, including a strip of cardstock for good measure.

Testing this hypothesis was relatively quick. I tried to recreate the images from the first roll.

Chanel products come in very good boxes. I'm loath to cut them up for cameras. Maybe someday I'll get into larger formats. They are also very handy and attractive for storage.

My new Cricut cutting machine came with a small supply of vinyl. Trying to think of an artistic use for it, I looked up the Japanese character for Kuro, the name I've given to my renovated Ventura guitar, and applied it as a headstock ornament -  matte black on the glossy finish.

A few of the new frets and the Black Winter pickups in a sunbeam with a mysterious, colorful reflection between them.

More of an action scene in that sunbeam. Pretty tricky to open the shutter and get your hand back on a chord for a five-second exposure.

My hair has been in a ponytail for over half my life. These are the best hair ties I've ever used. Anybody else notice this box is almost exactly as high as a 120 roll of film?

In workshops, where several people develop rolls of film that they've exposed in the same area as everyone else, there's often confusion as to whose negatives are whose. It occurred to me that using the first exposure for a selfie would solve that, in addition to being a chance to observe them exposing a frame and winding the film before they go off on their own. Last week, I led a workshop for high school students and used this camera to demonstrate how close to get, recreated here in the sunroom sunbeam.

The perfume shelf on top of the dresser in the bedroom.

We recently saw an episode of The Gilded Age in which the naive American heiress, the Duchess of Buckingham failed to signal her married status by not wearing a tiara. Tiaras have been substitutes for the halo of virtue and purity in religious art for centuries before that.

Body oil in a sunbeam.

Shrooms just after dawn.

Once again, the view from my place on the couch.

Simmering soup in the Le Creuset saucepan. 

Le Paquet Trente has two hand-drilled .21mm pinholes on the axis and 11mm above it, 30mm from a 6 x 5.4cm frame. This was my first attempt to machine-cut the film holder. I forgot to make a few lines to score and had to do some manual convincing to get the folds right. A Hasselblad only makes a 5.6cm square image, but I want the whole 6x6. The film is Kodak Gold 200 developed in a C-41 kit mixed in August and over its recommended capacity with this roll.