Pinhole Camera Experiments

For my art class I also did some experiments with pinhole cameras. Here are some examples as well as descriptions of what you're seeing. When the videos for each are done, they'll be uploaded to my YouTube channel.

Brisk Iced Teas Pinhole Camera
For this camera, I used a Brisk iced tea can. I cut it open, painted the inside black, and made two pinholes (at approximately a 70-degree angle) in the sides. This allows me to make single or double exposures. Double exposures can be of the same thing or different things. The results have been fascinating.




Here I punched holes in the paper to try for a 36-degree wrap. It partly worked.


Here I used sheet film and photographed a hill in a manner in which I can guarantee it's never been photographed before.


Eastmann Kodak 5217 (250D) Motion Picture Film 250-foot Spool Can
Using an old film can, I put a hole in the top and used the back (with circle-cut paper) to make these images. The images are significantly smaller than the paper. All of them look as though they were taken from inside a hole.





The Dragon Box Steroscopic Camera
Instead of describing this one, here is a video showing you how it's made.

Introducing the Dragon Box

For kicks, I took an old card box I was going to throw out and made it into a pinhole camera. Instead of putting one hole in the middle or the end and calling it a day, I put two holes in and decided to try making a stereoscopic camera. 

Here was my test image, a stereoscopic negative of a building under construction.


And the positive inversion. I printed this as a positive, but made this inversion in Photoshop.


This was the first image that got the camera noticed. I took this onto Zone VI fiber-based paper, so I had to press it after development and drying. I had it pressing under glass and noticed a few people looking at it and commenting on it. It definitely hints at what the Dragon Box (the camera's name) can do.


A Photoshop inversion to show the image's positive.


This negative really did not appear to turn out well at all, so I let it sit without much attention. When I digitized it, though, I decided to invert it. That inversion convinced me that this, the second image I took with the Dragon Box is the first solid sign of what this camera can do.




A double-exposure of a high-tension tower. I exposed the shot and then turned the camera around 180 degrees, capturing the same shot in reverse. Yes, this camera has potential. I'm glad I didn't thrown the box away.


And here's the Dragon Box and an explanation of how to make it.

Film Can Pinhole

For this pinhole camera, I used a 250-foot spool can from some Kodak Vision 3 5217 that I had recently emptied. I painted the inside black and put a laser-drilled 0.1mm pinhole on the front. In positive, it's quite good. In negative, though, it looks soft. But here are a few results from it so far.


Looking out a rabbit hole (not really, it just looks that way.)


A scan of the paper negative.


Sunset. I keep a few magnets on this can because it's magnetic. It's round, so they work well as chocks. For this, I magneted it to a sign to get some extra height. Once the sign stopped moving around, I took the shutter off and exposed the sunset. The clouds turned out pretty well.

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.

Finally Fisheye

I picked up a Pentax 6X7 35mm 1:4.5 fisheye lens the other week. I've only had one chance to use it (though I'm hoping to take it out again very soon.) The lens has a corner-to-corner angle of view of 180 degrees and, as such, warps the heck out of the image plane. This has a lot of creative image possibilities, and I tried it out with portraits.


These are scanned from a contact sheet, not the negatives, so they have slightly higher contrast and slightly lower resolution.




Here I tried to get the smoke coming out of Ashish's nose, but it didn't really show up well.



Just a sample sot of a wall to show the full image circle.Taken from arm's length.

A Walk with the Welti (and Baldinette)

Back in June I took in a long, hot summer walk with my Welta Welti and Balda Baldinette. Both are pretty similar cameras that would have sold to similar users and a fairly similar price point. You probably get the idea by now: They're a lot alike. Both are viewfinders, function the same way, have comparable lenses (or so it might seem from the focal distance and aperture range), and are of the same vintage. I'd always wanted to try them both, with the same film, on the same day, and decided to give it a go a couple of months ago. Here are the results.

Welta Welti I

Trees and turkeys. Given that PanF 50 is a very high-contrast film, this shot caught a lot of shadow and highlight detail. It also shows that this little lens has considerable sharpness.


A high-key tree with some sun glare (or maybe drying rings.)


Wide-open shot looking up through some flowers. Check out the swirly bokeh and say "oooooh."


This shot is just in here because it's the only shot where I took identical photos with each camera.

Balda Baldinette

To my eye, the Welti image is much sharper with better edge sharpness, deeper contrast, and better detail in general. In this shot, the hills are almost lost to the sky, but in the Welti shot there's a subtle but perceptible division.


Again here the sharpness drops off very quickly away from the center.


Stopped down considerably, the lens is much sharper.


And for some uses the edge softness can be appealing.

In sum, I like both for different reasons. I'd be more inclined to take the Welti with me if I were to choose either, but both are pretty nice cameras given their original cost (My Baldinette sold for around $40 on release [more for the nicer lenses] and the Welti for a bit more at around $50.) The $10 in the 1930s would have been significant -- the difference between $672 and $839. Yes. These cameras sold back them for as much as low-to-mid amateur range DSLR bodies and kit lenses sell for today.

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.

Focus: Out of

I picked up some cameras for a pretty reasonable price a few months back. One was a Kodak Vest Pocket Autographic 127 -- a high-end model with real leather. This camera, from 1918, was for a short while my oldest camera (until two weeks later in Petaluma, the trip from yesterday's post, when I bought a second Kodak Brownie Model B that is a few years older.)

In a nutshell, I thought I had fully extended the bellows for each shot, but I fully extended it for none of them. After a few of these horribly out of focus photos, I'll link to my video about the Vest Poacket Autographic 127.


That's about as in focus as I got. Having figured out what I did wrong, I need to now go back and try again.


Yeah. It kinda hurts my eyes to look at them, too.


It's almost artistic it's so blurry.

Polaroid SX-70 and Impossible Film

I have two Polaroid SX-70 cameras. These shots are from the Model 2 in white and tan. It's a very pretty camera and is probably the one of these that I will keep. I took it to a softball game in May and here are some results.

Someone, upon seeing these, remarked that they have a very 90's look. Interestingly, a friend about ten years my junior commented that these have a very 80's look. To my eyes, they look like their from the 70's. To a friend who's ten years my senior, they looked like they're from the late 60's.

Polaroids don't hold a specific epoch in their look, feel, and appeal. Polaroids instead remind of something we saw before the advent of digital -- a photo we could take and shake and watch materialize in front of our eyes. Then we could write a note on the border and chemical packet grip and stick a pin through it and hang it on our wall. Polaroids weren't meant to be ultra-refined and pixel-sharp; Polaroids were meant to -- and success at -- capturing a moment's essence. Polaroid images capture the feeling and sense of a moment and in enough detail that we recall it, but not in so much that we are forced to relive it. Polaroids offer us a memory but with the grace of distance and time, and we associate them with something from years ago, from a time we remember as happier, and we associate the photo, new or old, with that sense of youthful happiness, imbuing it into any Polaroid whether we took it today or in some previous, nearly forgotten decade that remains in our minds as little more than whispers and ghosts.


Very retro look. Very hipster.


Lined up waiting to go.


Sunset and trash can.

First Five Shots from a Box Camera

I piked up a Kodak Brownie Number 3 for $7 about two months ago. It had a 124 film spool in it, but no paper or film. Two weeks ago I shared some images of D.C. trolley cards that I developed. Those negatives came on a 122 spool that I bought for the spool and paper backing. After I developed the trolley car images, I spooled some 35mm film onto the 122 backing just to see if the box camera works. Here are the results.

High tension tower. I tried, with each frame, to estimate the camera's panoramic effect (due to the negatives being much less wide than 124 film) and line up the images appropriately. Sometimes it didn't work.

A tree with Mt. Diablo and Eagle Peak in the background.

I mined up this electrical tower better than the other.


I had the most hope for this shot and it turned out, I think, the best of the lot. In all, it's a decent result that does as good a job as can be done of capitalizing on the panoramic format.

Another I had high hopes for. I just set it down and did a time exposure for about three seconds, I think. The lens has good resolving power and nice contrast. For a camera made in the early 1920s, it really holds its own. If you'd like to see more about this camera and this model of camera, here's the YouTube video I made about the Kodak Brownie Number 3.