My first attempts at pin-hole photography are, err … interesting (and can be seen here…
This one was taken on platform two of Bicester railway station – I think for about 15 seconds directly into the light. I think it kind of has the feel of those early photographic efforts a century or more ago…
A digital pinhole camera! Very cool 🙂
Sadly not a digital pinhole camera – but if you could do that – that would be cool! >__<
As per‘s instruction I converted my old 35mm SLR (the one with the dodgy exposure metre) into one.
Nice! Were you using just ordinary colour print film?
I do particularly like the picture at the train station. Great perspective lines.
Does the SLR let you get much chance to compose the shot, or is the image way too dark to be able to use the viewfinder?
Sharpness – yes, I know what you mean. That always bothers me in my pictures…at least for a little while after I make my prints.
I can appreciate other people’s non-sharp images much more easily.
I think it’s because for my pictures I always have an image in my mind when I take it, and so when the actual print doesn’t match my expectation I can’t help but be disappointed. Looking at your pictures I don’t have that prejudice because I hadn’t seen the scene already.
I find that my own pictures improve after a few weeks and my mental picture has faded – maybe you should reconsider in a few weeks when you might better appreciate the impressionistic and expressionistic [*insert favourite pictorial style here*] aspects and pay less attention to the lack of ‘edges’. It may work for you too 🙂
But on a more practical note…
do you know approximately what the diameter of your pinhole is? (Magnifying glass and millimetre ruler lets you estimate a ‘close enough’ figure).
It’s probably not far short of 1mm – maybe 0.75mm?? Is that too big?
For best sharpness you probably want about 0.25 to 0.35 mm. You’ll likely have a noticable difference at that size.
0.25mm is good if the pinhole-to-film distance is about 50mm, 0.35mm is good if your p-2-f distance is about 100mm. So trying to get a 0.3mm hole would put you in the right ballpark. It’s not a hard science, though. There are very specific formulae based on wavelength of light for specific colours and spread of spectrum and stuff…but they all have a big fudge factor to allow for taste.
Uh…executive summary: yeah, try a smaller hole 🙂
Remember to increase the exposure a couple of stops to compensate for the smaller hole, though. The great thing about colour print film, of course, is that you can make a dreadful exposure and still get a reasonable print out of it 🙂