oatmeal redux

Ahhh. What a difference a little patience, a bit of reflective thinking, a few minutes and a whole lot of electrical tape makes! Ta-da: Meet the new, far-less-attractive oatmeal pinhole cam. In fact, I begin this entry with its before and after shots.

From my perspective, the real miracle is that I actually took the time to tweak the oatmeal cam--this, as opposed to just pitching it, as I had planned to do after seeing my first results. [In point of fact, shortly after seeing those results, I pulled out of storage a large, circular chipboard box I bought some time ago and started making myself a new pinhole cam.]

Since I had some time to kill while waiting for the spray paint on the new chipboard pinhole camera to dry, I decided to see what I could do with the oatmeal cam to see if I could actually get the results my pinhole camera making book suggested I would. And guess what? I may well have to rethink my top five cameras!

As a reminder, here were some of my first results. [no bueno]
























But like I said to start, after a few minutes, a little tweaking and a whole lot of black electrical tape, here is what yesterday's session brought--the negative is on the left, the positive on the right.







Not bad. In fact, I really, really like the results. To tell the truth, I was beside myself when I saw the negative start to reveal itself in the developer. "Well, flipping finally!" I thought.

Too bad the process of loading and unloading is so complicated and slow-going. Or maybe I should say instead, "Too my black bag isn't bigger." Anyhoot. If the process of loading and unloading this camera worked like the AE1 Program (36 shots before reloading), the Diana 151 (16 before reloading) or even the Holga (12 shots), I'd seriously have a new go-to cam--never mind my worrying about it getting squished in the camera bag.

I especially love working with the curved film plane. The Zero Image 45 also results in some kick-butt distortion (at least when using the single 25mm frame), but that's a flat film plane. This oatmeal cam provides something different. Still cool, but different, and to my way of thinking, muy bueno!

By way of example, here is a sampling of some of yesterday's shots. All images were taken on 5x7 sheets of Ilford Multigrade RC Express paper (what I've come to term simply "the gift that keeps on giving) and developed in Dektol for about 90 seconds. The outdoor (landscapes) images were all about 45 second exposures whereas what I'll call the close-up, still-life images (those featuring close-ups of cameras, phone, keys, lenses, etc.) were 6-7 minute long exposures. I think I like the timing for the wide/landscape shots, but I might increase slightly the times for the still life images, especially when I'm shooting subjects that are dark. I'm thinking that I'll boost things to 8-9 minutes and see what's what.

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.