a small good thing

well, maybe the oatmeal container isn't that small or necessarily good, but i'm hoping the pinhole will be. and certainly the shutter is sweet!

i decided my new year's resolution will be to experiment with paper negatives. using this most excellent resource (see esp. the shutter page) i built the camera last week and am now deciding what paper and developer i'd like to try.

in the meantime. . .

having been able to achieve with the pinhawk something of the sharpness i was hoping to achieve when i started experimenting with pinhole cameras, i decided to try the zero image again to see if using a more stable tripod, shooting indoors and ensuring the camera didn't move at all would help combat some of the softness i found with the zero image test roll. all i can say is thank goodness there weren't any non-reproducible images on the second roll. (well, technically there were a few that would be hard to restage--images i had hoped to include in an upcoming process presentation but it wasn't necessarily an integral part of the presentation. . .). only two of the images (see the first two shots below) came out. most of the negative strip was clear. i could see a shadows of images here and there and on a few of the frames i could make out something at the sides/top and bottom of each frame but for the most part, the negatives were a mess. unusable. as a matter of fact, i've never (not even when working with diana or holga) have i had this many unusable frames per roll.

so if the bear and photo shots below had looked like the others, i might have reasoned that the developer time was wrong or that something went wrong inside the camera. i have no idea at this point how to make sense of what exactly happened, why or how to ensure it doesn't happen again. it could simply be a matter of miscalculating the exposure time but i used the same process as i did with the first roll.

but here's another mystery about the zero one. after i saw the negatives, i decided to see if something was blocking the pinhole. (again, that the last two images were the only two to look halfway "normal" makes me think that whatever happened had worked itself out by the end of the roll.) compared with the pinholes i've made, this one seems. . .i don't know, fuzzy? with the ones i've made if i hold them up to the light, the light comes sharply though the pinhole. not in this case. i'm not sure if that's a feature of zero one pinholes or if mine is shall we say, "unique."

though i hadn't planned to use the zero image over the holidays, i really needed to see what would happen if i shot another roll of film in the camera. if the problem was the pinhole, it made sense that my exposure times would be wildly off.

luckily, i had an expired roll of efke kb 400--this would allow for shorter exposure times and the fact that there were 24 exposures on the roll meant that i could shoot and develop a roll rather quickly. i calculated the exposure times as i had with the other two rolls and these were all fine--all there (see images beneath first two below). a bit over-exposed but i knew i had gone a bit long on some of the shots, hoping for more light-play/contrast then a normal exposure would afford. so yeah. not sure what happened with the other roll. and i'm still not certain if there's something up with the pinhole.

i kept the camera steady for most of the shots but they are not nearly as sharp as the last pinhawk images. i understand that part of this has to do with the distance between the pinhole and film. and it's not that i'm not liking the zero image images, it's more a matter of being frustrated again by the lack of sharpness.

tetenal depleted

i took the pinhawk down to the tracks in halethorpe on a very, very windy day. yipes. i wanted to shoot another roll that day, in part, because i was getting ready to dump the tetenal batch i'd been working with since oct 25 and figured i could maybe get one more roll out of it. more importantly, however, i wanted to test out the new shutter i had made for the pinhawk. i wanted to make sure that there were no problems with light leakage before i use the camera for images or events that aren't easily re-doable.

the shutter worked well and any problems with the images were the result of the wind or camera shake. and then there's the fact that maybe i should have dumped the tetenal after i did the 22nd or 23rd roll. the colors here look decidedly x-pro--at least based on the results i've been getting with slide film.

i had commented elsewhere how much i loved diy color developing and the tetenal kit has been really, really excellent in terms of costs and output--and it's been surprisingly easy to use. i started developing my own color film at the end of august and i recall how nervous i was to do this. how i'd get or keep the chemicals to 100 degrees was puzzling and seemed to require more thought, effort and pre-planning then i was used to. i was assured (again, by really generous and supportive folks on flickr) that this was doable--some suggested it was easier than b/w. as for the cost--i figure i'm at about a buck a roll. depending on how far i stretch the tetenal, maybe a little less per roll. i think that with shipping costs included, the 5L kit cost me about 80-90 bucks. for the sake of simpler math, round that up to 100 and that's 20 bucks a liter and i'm getting on average, 22 rolls per liter.

as for getting and keeping chemicals at 100 degrees, the two dollar styrofoam cooler i got at the dollar store has been a lifesaver. i put the jugs of chemicals in there, fill it with 120 degree water and let the chemicals heat while i'm reeling up the film. i come down, scoop out some of the water, add more hot water, put the thermometer in the developer and place the tank in the cooler to get that warmed up. a few minutes later, i'm ready to go. 3 1/2 minutes for the dev, 4 for the bleach-fix (at least when the batch is still new-ish), 3 minute rinse, 1 minute stabilizer and the negs are ready to hang and dry. surprisingly quick and easy. almost makes b/w processing (especially caffenol devs) seem high-maintenance by contrast.

and i think i'm definitely going through a pro-color phase at this point in time. there's something about the added information (in terms of color info) that really appeals to me right now. i'm hoping this will still be the case, this spring when i've more colorful matter to choose from. last spring i was still/only shooting digital and am especially eager to know spring (esp. my gerbers and gazanias) on/through film.

pinhole. pinhawk. (pinheck?)

maybe my post about shooting digital vs. film angered the digital gods who, in turn, ensured that i will never take a pinhole image that isn't "soft" or blurry. . .

with the help, support and advice of two (most generous) people on flickr (i.e., look here and here) i set about modifying one of my brownie hawkeye flash cameras. i had debated buying another zero image but can't currently justify the cost. bottom line, i wanted to try a medium format pinhole.

at the risk of sounding like a one trick (or one move) pony, this was the kind of sharpness and detail i was going for but i ended up getting much softer, blurrier results (see below. . . and then sigh with me).

soft, blurry and funky is usually fine with me--as are scratched, watermarked and/or dusty negatives. as a matter of fact, as far as the funky goes, i often find myself trying to ensure that every camera i work with produces holga-esque images. which begs the question: why not just shoot always and everything with the holga? answer: cause that would be too easy--it's more fun to produce images that might have been taken with a holga but were not.

if anything, it could be my experience with digital cameras (and their results) that informs my goals when it comes to working with pinhole cameras. i was bummed that my matchbook images were much, much softer than others i had seen online (i.e., those that made me want to try pinhole photography in the first place), same goes for the images i took with the zero image and now the pinhawk. and i swear, i'm not spinning around with the camera, not shaking it, etc. while taking these shots. i'm working with a tripod and/or setting the camera on a stable surface but i do think that i might introduce some disruption at the start and end of each exposure (i.e., in the process of uncovering and covering the pinhole). in this way, i figured that the shorter exposures would be blurrier than the 1/2 hour or longer exposures. though not the most patient of folks, i'm not against practicing in order to achieve better--or just different--results. it's just been frustrating to try so many different things--size of pinhole, type of camera, distance from pinhole to film, etc.--and to end up feeling like i'm not making any kind of progress toward my goal.