Nutcracker in the Castle

Over the holidays, our local art museum, a mansion surrounded by gardens, decorates with a Nutcracker theme, complete with acting and ballet.

In November, The Populist needed more tape, and I couldn't find the New Glarus Populist, when one day I was going out and thought I needed a 35mm camera with me so I grabbed the vintage PrePopulist, which has a 24x50mm semi-panoramic format. It had for some reason been stripped of it's shutter. I ripped the shutter off a 24x96mm camera I wasn't likely to use again and taped it on to the PrePopulist.  As it turned out I didn't take any pictures that day. When I got home I added some new viewfinders, and I ended up just carrying that camera around for two months.

Just before The Paine took the Nutcracker down, Sarah and I went over there so she could unleash the D750 on the decorations.  I didn't expect to take any pictures. Tripods are not normally allowed except by advance arrangement, so it's a pretty tough assignment for pinhole.  However, for the Nutcracker, they place a book stand in each room opened to a page from the story which is interpreted by the room decorations.  Under the book is a small shelf.  Just big enough to put a table-top tripod on.

The dining room is the Land of the Sugar Plum Fairy.  Too bad you can't see the outrageous pile of sweets on the table.  There is kind of a pinhole treat though.  The curved chair back overlaying the mullions of the window and a silhouette of the cake toppers look for all the world like it's being distorted by a lens.

The Breakfast Room, a glassed in porch, is the Land of Snow, echoing the view outside.

Mrs. Paine's drawing room may have been the dance of the flowers.

Another pinhole treat. All these little tree lights are a great model for diffraction.  For you fans of Lord Rayleigh, here's a full resolution crop which depicts the Airy disks that those equations predict.  n.b. .15mm Gilder electron microscope aperture, 24mm from the film.

The Chinese Dance takes place in the Great Hall.  The camera this time is on a handrail.  The trees to the left are just barely perceptibly rotating.

Upstairs they give up the ballet pretext and characterize it as the Stahlbahm family home. They don't have the books anymore, but each room has a freestanding lecturn with some text about the room that will hold a desktop tripod. Here in the sitting room I think is where she may have gotten the Nutcracker.

The parents' bedroom.

Mom's closet.

On the stairway landing is Herr Drosselmeyer's workshop.

The Gothic gallery overlooking the garden was originally built as a place for musicians to entertain guests in the Great Hall behind it below, but it never got finished. Now it's full of built-in cases to display objects, containing - what else - nutcrackers.

All with the PrePopulist. .15mm pinhole 24mm from 24x50mm frame.

Pinhole Lab Camera Accessories: A Tripod

June 2019. When my university retiree account disappeared with a new change in policy, the pictures I uploaded to this blog while logged into that account disappeared. I'm working on fixing that but it's going to be at least a summer long project. 

Sometimes you get involved in a project, and because it's interesting and maybe for reasons that could either be described as obsessive-compulsive or religious, you go at it for a little while too long, and then find that maybe it's not worth it.

In workshops, I've always found it frustrating not to be able to give everybody a tripod so they could have freedom in placing and pointing the camera. I used to give out doubly bagged sandbags for participants to mush into a surface for the camera to sit on to level it or to point it up or down a little. With the Pinhole Lab Camera with it's rising and falling and left and right shift pinholes, my intention was to overcome that somewhat, but you know, you don't always have a perfectly level surface, and sometimes, you just want to point the camera directly at something and take advantage of that sweet rectilinearity of the pinhole when it's on axis with a flat piece of film.  There's also the issue, also addressed by the rising front of the Pinhole Lab Camera, of having the foreground fill half the frame.  If you're taking a portrait of someone across the table, having the camera six or so inches above it will help a lot with the composition, and the rising front can have a strange effect on shapes like heads near the top of the frame.

Wouldn't it be cool if you could make a tripod as easily as a pinhole camera?  How pinholy!  You could take advantage of the skills and materials used to build (and for me, design) the Pinhole Lab Camera.

Links:  Original Description    Construction    Feeding and Use    Link to Templates   Excusado

So I laid out the template so that it would fit on a tabloid sheet of paper. I tried to make the legs as long as I could on that paper size. I could make them bigger on multiple sheets, but you'd have to do the "glue A adjacent to A" several times and that increases the chance that something's going to get glued down out of alignment.

The forces on a tripod are greater than on a camera, and this model relies more on multiple layer lamination and folds and flaps to get the strength to adjust and hold the camera.  Maybe relies on them too much.  Some parts have multiple folds and it takes six binder clips or clothespins to clamp some of them.

I mentioned I worked for my dad in a plant making feed and fertilizer mixers in a previous post.  He not only managed the plant but he was the designer and engineer as well.  I make these templates on a computer with Illustrator and do repeated iterations to find out what works.  My dad would do it on a drawing table with trigonometry and the parts would fold and assemble together the first time. The feed chutes for those mixers had to fit into existing buildings and come in at some strange compound angles. He gave me the Chemical Rubber Company book of Standard Mathematical Tables for high school graduation.

So, what have I come up with?

It's a desktop tripod about 7 inches tall.  Not too big, but getting it that far off the surface it's sitting on gives you a lot of flexibility with composition.

The tilting head is held by a bolt and wingnut.  I just happened to have the little spring which allows a variable drag to the tilt so you don't have to constantly loosen and tighten it, you can just move it freely and it will stay in place.

It attaches to the camera with rubber bands. I hate to have a roll film camera without a tripod mount, but it's a pain with a single shot camera, especially one that's intended to be used in all sorts of orientations.  So the tripod has a little platform that can be attached with rubber bands. (Carry extras.)

It has a head that will tilt back and forth about 45 degrees.  It's a little steadier if that tilt is toward the single leg side of the tripod, but it's easy to switch from one side to the other if you're tilting the camera the other way.

If you need to tilt any higher, you can just change the orientation of the camera.

The legs are restrained from opening by a piece of butcher's twine (I do this in my kitchen) threaded through each leg through holes big enough to get it through and move, yet small enough to give a little resistance to hold the movement in place. I did this by glueing the end of the twine to a toothpick.

By adjusting where those legs are, you can make the camera level on a non-level surface.

It's admittedly a limited set of flexibilities, but it adds dramatically to the supports you can utilize and maintain a level camera. (You do want a level camera, right?)

It's very light and wouldn't be much use in a breeze.  Maybe if I could find those sandbags.

It's just a hair on the complicated side to make. The template is on-line if you can figure it out from these images.

The problem is that you can buy a table top tripod better than this for under $10.  You can get a 50 inch good-enough tripod from Target for $11 and a pretty decent 62 inch one from Freestyle for $30.  And you can get some real deals on spiffy vintage travel tripods for cheap on eBay. You'll need to make a platform to attach the camera with the rubber bands.

But if you're feeling pinholy some Sunday...

Excusado con La Cámara de Laboratorio Estenopeica

Ironically, the room in our house with the most beautiful light is the bathroom.  It's a small room illuminated by a single window which faces directly south overlooking our neighbors' roof.

Part of the beauty of the light are the myriad surfaces that reflect the light around. Almost everything in the room is at least a little bit glossy. From the high shine of the porcelain, to the low sheen of the tiles and walls. Even one of the fabrics, the tied back curtain, is satiny, as well as translucent. There are two large mirrors. And it's all light colored - short exposures (well, for interior pinhole anyway). Depending on what kind of weather is illuminating that window, there are a million variations.

Key to my current pinhole needs, there are several level surfaces, near the edge, to place a camera.

I think it looks like a Renaissance palace. The walls are beautifully and credibly marbleized.  This is all Sarah's doing.  When we moved in it had yellow walls, blue and purple plastic tiles and two fluorescent tubes that buzzed and flashed on either side of a generic mirrored cabinet above the sink which was supported by hexagonal chrome pipes. Boy, that woke you up in the morning.

And there is the appeal of the classical Weston reference.

It is also inside and out of the wind.  As I write this the temperature is going back up to seasonal levels but that's still fairly cold around here.

Sounds like a good place for some ground-truth testing with the Pinhole Lab Camera.

Links:  Original Description    Construction    Feeding and Use    Link to Templates

I'm going to quit referring to these by their sizes and just describe the format. Long and short distance to the pinhole; rectangular, curved panorama (which can come in regular or large), or square.

We'll begin with an overview of what we're working with.  This was with a super-wide large short curved panorama using the on-axis pinhole, with the camera supported by the window sill.  You can just barely see it on the right side of the door mirror.

Here's my attempt at the Weston classic.  Short vertical rectangle.  Rising front pinhole.  It's not completely on the floor. I put the Kleenex box under it. Not a curved format, but the frame of the mirror is a little bowed by a paper curl.  Pinhole fun, huh? The verticals are parallel though.

Long curved panorama with the rising front pinhole.  Hardly looks curved, does it.  You can see the camera on the cabinet, just slightly higher than the bottom of the mirror frame, but close enough that if the on-axis pinhole had been used, it would have been right in the middle and therefore straight, but now it's positioned near the bottom by the rising front.  If you look at where the sloped wall meets the ceiling at the right you can tell it's curved.  The top of the frame would have been really curved if it was in the picture.  But it's not, so to the viewer it doesn't exist.

Short square through the on-axis pinhole. Camera is sitting on the toilet tank with it which is only about 8 inches deep.

Short curved panorama with the rising pinhole on the top of the cabinet.  You get the wide angle in this one, but since there are no obvious straight horizontal lines, the curve doesn't really dominate the composition.

Long vertical rectangle. falling front. Camera is on the toilet seat.

Short square format with the on-axis pinhole, camera on the sink.  Again not a curved format.  Look how straight the verticals are on the right, but the paper was a little curvy at the top left, (well, in the lower right of the camera, but you know what I mean), so more pinhole fun.

One of the neat things about the square format, depending on which side the camera is sitting on, you can have both a rising/falling option and a right/left shift.  Here's the short square format with a rising front and a shift to the right, this time with the paper really flat in the camera and nicely square to the opposite wall.

I know you're thinking that there's no place to put a camera over there. If you look at the first picture, hanging over the doorknob is a headband Sarah uses to keep her hair back while she washes her face.  The camera is hanging in that.

I did these with three separate cameras, often making exposures at the same time.  In the photo from the door knob, you can see the camera sitting on the toilet seat (it wouldn't stay level near the edge of the beveled cover), Again the short square with a rising front and a shift right.

Short curved panorama with the rising front. The camera was laying on it's back on the tile surround and was kind of jammed between the wall and the tub.

Long rectangle with the on-axis pinhole.  Camera was sitting on the corner of the tub.  Looks like it got bumped, but it makes for a bit of dynamism. Pinhole fun, eh?

The short rectangle with the on-axis pinhole.  Nice bit of resolution test with the pouf made from netting. How about them instant, larger than optimum pinholes?

Now you're thinking, wait a minute, that's from the middle of the tub, there's no place to put a camera.  It was supported by a stack of the stand from the toilet brush with the Kleenex box sitting vertically on top of it - here portrayed by a short vertical rectangle with the rising front, behind it on the bottom of the tub, this time with the camera tilted up a little.

I needed two tries to get the closeup.  I had a little code of placing a bit of tape on the outside of the camera so I knew what format it was loaded with.  The first time on top the stack it looks like I forgot to change it.  This exposure is with the negative in the back of the camera as for a long rectangle, but exposed by the on-axis pinhole on the short side.  I think a sunbeam may have been reflected in the shiny Kleenex box.

Many beginning pinholers will choose the ground for their camera support, so here, for them, is a short vertical rising front, with the camera right level on the floor, without the floor filling the lower half of the composition.

And to finish, another large short curved panorama, with the on-axis pinhole, with the camera lying on it's back on the floor.

I have to say I didn't have any surprises from the camera, they were kind of fun to use, I think it showed some of the possibilities it offers, and I like these pictures.

Ektar in the Evil Cube

The next modification I do to my cameras should be one of those little slots where you slide the flap from the film box to identify what you've got loaded in there.  Sometime pre-holidays, I loaded the Evil Cube with Ektar 100. I think I might have expected to do pictures outside.  Several weeks later I actually started shooting but I thought it was loaded with Portra 400.  They both have the light grey markings that are hard to see.

So I underexposed everything by two stops..  I thought the negatives looked thin, and then when I went to put them in the scanner I saw the Ektar marking and figured it out.

But ya gotta try to see if you can recover anything, and it turns out I got some images I like.  Ektar really doesn't like being underexposed so there's a lot of Carravagian shadows, and some shiftiness of the color that's kind of interesting.

Sarah’s animalmorphic lens.

Flowers from Andy for Sarah's birthday.

Fruit by the west kitchen window.

I can't seem to slice bread without going off at some crazy angle.

The tips of some flowers in a sunbeam through the south kitchen window.

Roses drying in a bowl.

The leaded glass window in the stairwell.

The afternoon before Christmas

An autumnal display that persisted into the holidays.

All with the Evil Cube.  .3mm pinhole 6cm from 6x6cm frame on Kodak Ektar 100.

Feeding and use of the Pinhole Lab Camera

June 2019. When my university retiree account disappeared with a new change in policy, the pictures I uploaded to this blog while logged into that account disappeared. I'm working on fixing that but it's going to be at least a summer long project. 

One of the basic concepts of the Pinhole Lab Camera is that the negatives are even divisions of the most common photographic paper, 8x10 inches.  That also means you have to cut the paper - accurately - under safelight.

Original description link    Construction post link    Link to Templates

A paper cutter is a common thing to find in a darkroom, but not always, and it's a bit of an expensive thing to get. I cut paper by putting stripes of light colored tape on a cheap cutting mat at the distances from the edge I want to make cuts, in this case 2½, 4, and 6 inches, and cutting with a steel rule and a craft knife. Your risk management officer wants me to remind you that this could be dangerous. Put the knife inside some kind of box with a white interior so it doesn't roll around and you can see it under safelight. If you haven't done this much before, practice a little outside the darkroom. Safelights can be pretty dim so wait till you're dark adapted and make sure you can actually see what you're doing. Put the cut pieces of paper in a light tight container.

I may have given the impression with the slots and ridges that you just have to place the paper in, close the camera and it'll stay put. A moving camera gets jostled about quite a bit, and if the paper doesn't stay in place - no picture.

The solution, as my young students would tell you, is more tape.  Wrap a loop with the adhesive side out, and place it in the middle of the paper.

Then place it and press it down where appropriate for that format and give the camera a little shake to make sure that bit of tape keeps your negative in place.

These bits of tape should be considered consumables. They get misplaced in the darkroom easily and they don't last forever. I don't think they harm the chemistry much if forgotten during development, but you sure wouldn't want to use them with unexposed paper afterward.

For the 2½ inch distance, for both the square and rectangular formats, place the paper down toward the rectangular end of the camera and adhere it to the square side opposite the pinholes.

For the four inch distance, the paper goes in the Back.  The Back is slightly larger than the paper, so try to get it square when you place it there.  You might notice that the paper isn't perfectly flat.  The pinhole doesn't care, and that's all part of the fun, eh pinholers?  If that's a problem, the solution is, of course, more tape.

The curved formats are also attached with tape, again adhered at the center of the paper. Try to get the ends of the curves equal distance from the front of the camera.

I'm going to try to get the template so those ridges are a little closer to where they should be, but I wouldn't trust them to hold the paper in place while transporting the camera if they were the exact right size.

For the curve at the four inch distance, it's a slightly different process.  Again, put the tape in the center of the paper and adhere it down with equal ends of the paper sticking out of the Back.

Then squeeze the sides inward a bit, insert them into the box,  and place the Back of the camera on. (This really does look like I'm feeding it.)

 
Before closing the camera, check that the Pinhole Mount is still under the Pinhole Mount Lock.  If you had some black or red tape, it wouldn't hurt to tape it in place. It has a tendency to get popped out from under the Lock during particularly excitable closing of the shutter and rubbing it to make sure it adheres.

The tape for the shutters should also be considered a consumable, and as noted in the construction post, you should carry spares.

I've recently found a couple rolls of 3M plastic tapes that you might find available: Black Colored Plastic Tape (the people who named that must not have grown up in the South) and Decorator and Repair Tape.  They are lower tack than I remember but these rolls could be 10 years old.  I'm kind of liking them for shutters because the handle flaps tend to lie flat against the camera and out of the way.  The classic, of course, is opaque black photographic tape which is still available in a few brands.  If you want to splurge for this and get noticeably higher quality, you can get 3M #235, which is a truly iconic material, but it's going to cost you as much as all the other materials. n.b. I also found a couple old rolls of electrical tape that wouldn't stick to the cardboard at all.

One problem with using tape as a shutter is it's tendency to pull off fibers from the card stock both damaging the camera and reducing the adhesiveness of the piece of tape.  The solution to this is, of course, more tape.  By placing a layer of your cheap masking tape around the pinhole, you create a surface that is more forgiving of adhering and removing tape. You might even be able to use black duct or gaffers tape for shutters after making this modification if you could tear it accurately in these small pieces.

Viewfinding is done with the aid of our first accessory, a cardboard straight edge.  Because card stock has the tendency to curl, fold a piece the long way and clamp and glue to counteract that.  It's not steel, but if you're careful, you can keep it straight.

The idea is to align the straight edge with the mark you made of the location of the pinhole on the sides of the camera in the front and where the edge of the paper is in the camera at the back.  With some of the formats that's the corner of the box.  For the 2½ x 4 inch format at the 2½ inch distance, as illustrated below, it's the front side of the Light Trap. You could also place marks where the curves intersect the side of the camera.

If you sight down the straight edge so it looks just like a line, you can see where the limits of the image will be.  Previsualizing where you want those edges to be is part of the zen of pinhole thing. I think most photographers have some idea before they put the camera up to their eyeball, but it can be an odd thing for some people. (Pro tip: they're usually not as close as they should be.)

Of course since even the shortest of exposures is going to be fifteen seconds, the camera needs to be supported absolutely motionless.  The iconic place for this is on the ground, but I find it tiresome that this often fills half the frame with a featureless foreground of the pavement of the school parking lot. That rising front pinhole should help a little with that.

The ultimate support is a tripod, and we'll get to that eventually, but the rising and falling front give you a some pointing flexibility if you have a level place to set the camera.

You'd be surprised how many benches, tables, chairs, trees, information kiosks, refuse and recycling bins, planters and walls that are nice and level that you can support a camera on that gets the point of view off the ground. Place the camera right on the edge so you're not just substituting the featureless top of your support for the pavement.

Note you have to hold the camera down when you take the tape off and you're liable to move the camera a bit when you remove your hand.  With long exposures on a cloudy day that's not going to make much difference as long as you don't actually change where it's pointing. For shorter exposures  of fifteen to thirty seconds on sunny day, you can probably hold the camera down with your hand.

The camera is very light and susceptible to being blown away by the wind.  For longer exposures, unless you plan for a place to sit and rest your arm, most people can't keep from involuntarily wiggling and moving the camera if they try to hold it down for more than a minute.  In that case you could find something you had around that you didn't use very often and had a little heft to it that you could set on the Pinhole Lab Camera to hold it down.