Pinhole Camera -- Brisk Iced Tea Can

For fun and a class assignment, I made a pinhole camera from a Brisk Iced Tea can. The can holds up to 5X7 film nicely (it's almost a liter in volume) and so I've tested it with 5X7 and 4X5. The 5X7 film needs holes punched in it.

This was specifically designed to be a trick camera. I punched two pinholes directly into the camera at approximately a 60-degree angle from the image center. This causes overlapping image circles. The pinhole shutters operate independently, though, so I can take the images of opposing directions, the same thing from different angles (as below) or two completely different subjects.

For this shot, I took a picture of a hill, turned the camera so the other pinhole pointed at it, and took the shot again.



This negative image (on photo paper) resulted from a long shot of ducks and a fountain on a pond on top of a more abstract image of moving water.


This is the positive print.


One of my first shots, the hole on the left wasn't in the right place and light couldn't get to the image.

Softball on Film

For the last game of this year's softball league, I decided to bring my Pentax 6X7, Kodak Brownie Model B Number 3, and my DSLR. I took a single roll of HP5+ (400 ISO) with the 6X7 and a single team photos with the Brownie. I had loaded it the day before with a sheet of 100 ISO Arista 4X5 sheet film. I'd never tried 4X5 film in the Brownie before, and was both nervous about and excited for the results.
Pentax 6X7














Kodak Brownie

To make sure the camera was light-tight, I cut 127 backing paper to fit over the red hole and used mashing tape to hold it on. That large white dot is from when the tape failed overnight, exposing it to a little light from the streetlamp outside my window all night. I also wrapped the junction in backing paper, though in hindsight I think that was silly. In all, I'm really happy with the shot. It proved that the old Model B cameras can use 4X5 film for one-off fill-frame use (respooling any film size onto their paper backing leaves a cropped image.) Also, it showed that, with some care, the camera is lightproof enough to use sheet film. And, it showed that the simple meniscus lens has enough resolving power to provide good photos on modern films.

Large Format Smokehouse Ruins

Back in April, I visited Round Valley Regional Park in Brentwood, California, with my Pentax K-7 and a few lenses. At the time, I identified an old stone house along Marsh Creek. On my trip in May, I met a park ranger who told me locals said the stone building was a smoke house, but he didn't know anything more about it than that.

I managed four shots worth sharing from the trip. My goal was mostly to learn about the camera. I attempted one mega macro, extending the Calumet's bellows the full 22 inches. This led to the five-inch width covering about a half inch of real space -- an in-camera 10X macro. Maybe more or less (I didn't measure the subject.) Anyway, the macro didn't turn out, but it's good to know that I have mega macro capacity in my camera all the time.

Another goal was to try some tilts and swings. Here are the first results. For a lens, I have one large-format lens, a Caltar 165mm in a Seikosha SLV shutter. The lens is amazing with substantial movement available and very sharp rendering. The shutter is great with no discernible movement, a very pleasant sound, and reliable times. For film, I used Lucky 100 and Arista 100. I also shot four images on Rollei Orthochromatic ATO 2.1 but have not developed them yet (I just mixed some XTol tonight, though, so those images are likely coming in a future entry.


Testing out a standard shot but at f32 or 45 to obtain the deepest field marked on the shutter. The shutter actually closes down to about f165, and I tried a shot at that aperture. However, I didn't have a very deep range when I tried that, so it's hard to see the difference between f165 and f22. So I'll have to try that again in the future.


This was at the maximum aperture -- f6.3. It's shallow because of the aperture, not because of any Sheimplung-type trickery.


This one, however, is super-shallow due to Sheimpfulng-type trickery. Basically, I went craxy with the shifts and tilts.


I shot this at f8, f22, and f165. This is the best because it's the least blown out of the three. I accidentally made the Ilfosol-3 too strong for the Arista batch, and all the negatives were over developed about a stop and a half. Oops.