Steve Maniscalco Photography

Beach Pinhole

Carpenteria beach, CA. 

Home made 6x9 pinhole camera, FP4, Thornton's 2-bath developer

Beach Pinhole

Carpenteria Beach lifeguard stand.  Three views.

Homemade 6x9 pinhole camera, FP4 film, thornton's 2-bath developer

Christopher Creek

Finally got around to these pinhole images taken earlier this Summer.

4x5 Pinhole, fp4, Christopher Creek, AZ

Bridge

Sequoia National Park

Homemade 6x9 pinhole camera.  Ilford FP4 in Thornton's 2-bath developer

Devestated

Mt. Lemmon near Tucson Arizona.

 

From home made 6x9 pinhole camera.  Ilford FP4, in Thornton's 2 bath developer.

Newport Beach Pinholes

I miss living near the ocean...not the least because of the photo opportunities.

 

 

 

From a homemade 6x9 pinhole camera.

Newport Beach Pier

The pier at Newport Beach California.

Pinhole image from homemade 6x9 pinhole camera.  Print available in my Etsy store.

General Sherman

6x9 pinhole of the General Sherman tree in the Sequoia National Forrest.

Misc.

The Mailman Brought...

Two new graphic lens boards from Canyonland Graphics.  The seller ships promptly and the boards look good.

On Its Way...

To mount on those new lensboards, I have a pinhole mount from Skink (Hey, I didn't name them), and a Fujinon 250mm f6.3 large format lens from KEH.  This is my first time buying from Skink.  I'll let you know how the customer service and the product turns out.  Shipping is from China, so it may be awhile.

I have bought from KEH in the past.  They are probably the best single source for used camera gear on the web.  You can beat their prices now and again, but not always, and their items are as described.  The have actual customer service people and a good return policy.  All in all, you can often find what you want, and you avoid the crap shoot that is ebay.

Recently...

I asked over at the Large Format Photography forum for the blog addresses of anyone who cared to share.  I figure I've been spending too much time reading political blogs (I'm a junkie) and too little time exposing myself to good work.  Sounds like I need a "Blogs I follow" post some time soon.

I'm Carrying...

The Balda Super Baldax, loaded with Illford Pan-F (50 iso, B&W film).  I need to remember to dig up my ND filters and put them in the bag.  I like being able to shoot narrow DOF in the daylight.

12/9/08

The Mailman Brought
Seven 4x5 film holders.  Cool.  We continue to get closer and closer...

Projects
Just when I thought my 4x5 pinhole project was hopeless due to lack of cheap way of using film holders, I find there are film holders that will fit my back. They are not common though, and considering I'm resigned (ok, excited about) buying a large format camera, perhaps it's still not worth going there.

Photos
I swear, I will eventually post some more photos.  The holidays and my projects are eating up shooting time.  We're planning a family outing to the mountains this weekend.  I doubt I'll get any dedicated shooting time, but I'm taking the borrowed R-D1 along with...so at least I should get a chance to play with it.

Ramblings
I love film.  I hate negatives.  Ok, mostly I hate trying to keep track of negatives.  It's not really much worse than keeping track of digital files...maybe not even as bad...but it is a chore.
These days I've taken to carrying a binder full of negative sheets with me when I take my boys to events/appointments.  I then sit and lable the sheets from memory as I wait.  How much better if I were disciplined enough to record that stuff in the first place?

Pomegranate

My putting things on a table and aiming a camera at them is a sure sign that I have little time to give to photography.  Which makes an interesting point about the effects of constraints on the creative process.  Over time, I've grown ever fonder of less versitile tools.  I gave up on zooms, for the most part, years ago.  That decision was driven by a desire for high quality optics I could afford, but also by the fact that zooms made it tough for me to take pictures.  I found myself tweeking the focal length so much that I never adjusted my point of view by moving my feet.  Sometimes I even found myself a bit paralyzed by indecision, resulting in missed shots.

My disdain for zoom lenses soon progressed in to a desire for a light kit of three primes...then two primes...now, often, a single fixed lens camera.  Ends up the weight of the kit isn't the important part so much as the lack of distraction.  Swapping lenses back and forth, "Should I use the 50mm or the 35mm?"  It all just seems to get in the way of thinking about the image I want to make, or finding an image that wants to be made.

Anyway...that's the long way around to showing off this latest product of technological constraint.  Taken with a 6x9 pinhole camera (one I have not yet featured here) at around 38mm focal length.  A .25mm pinhole at that focal length means it's at about f144.  This is a 4 minute exposure on Ilford FP4+ film, developed in my usual Barry's 2-step developer.

Another Pinhole Project, Pt. II

Where did I leave off?  Oh yea.  I'd finished the pinhole/lens board part of the project, and was confident of a happy resolution.  Well, it mostly went that way...mostly.

Here is the thing that is becoming a camera.  I'm confident it was a camera in the past, because of the 4x5 graflok'ish back and the obvious lens mount.  The best speculation I've been able to find, shopping it around the various forums, is that it was used for some sort of copy or scientific work, where a single focus might still be useful.  The lens mount is really stout, as is the whole camera.
That knob on the bottom (shown as top) hides a 1/4 inch socket.  Looks like a great way to mount it to a tripod.

I could have taken the easier way out and just mounted my pinhole to the existing shutter mount hole.  Now that the process of making a crude round lens board is behind me, I kinda wished I had.  I had two reasons for not going that route.  The first was that I didn't have any step rings or filters that would fit and I didn't have the patience to order those parts.  Basically, I had the time to work on it now, so I wanted to get it done.  Secondly, and more importantly, the lens mount added another 20mm or so of flange distance...which of course is equal to focal length here.  I just wanted a wider field of view.

The almost final product looks like this.  You can see that I removed the lens mount and used the screws from that mount to attach the lens board.  What you can't see is that I've covered the back of that lens board with the foamie material, just as I did with the pinhole disk.  The foamie will make it light tight and eliminate unwanted internal reflections.
So, what I've got here is a 90mm focal length with a .35mm pinhole.  That makes for an f257 camera with a 4x5 film field of view equivalent to a 24mm lens on 135 film.  Not bad.  Not as wide as I'd really like, but not bad.

By now, it may be obvious that I've done a couple of odd things here.  I do have reasons...not necessarily good reasons...but reasons never the less.
The first odd thing is, why do I have a roll film adapter mounted, if I built this thing to shoot 4x5?  That one's easy.  I don't yet have any way of developing 4x5 and I want to test the camera.
Second odd thing?  Why did I bother with the whole interchangeable pinhole thing on a fixed focal length camera?  Well, I saw someone else do something like that for use with a Graflex and I wanted to see how it should be done.  It was simply a learning experience.

There are still two things to be done...one vital, one not so.  Remember I said that knob was hiding a 1/4 inch socket that looked like a tripod mount?  Ends up it's a finer thread than tripods use.  So, at the moment, I have no way to mount this thing to a tripod.  I do have a friend with tools and skills, so I'll soon have a new socket tapped in to the bottom of the thing.  A tripod socket is pretty vital.
The other thing I'd like to add is a cold shoe.  I don't really need a cold shoe.  I'm used to setting these things on a tripod and using a viewfinder to visualize the composition...and just sort of point it to aim.  That works better than you might thing.   In any case, if I can scare up an old cold shoe in a hurry, I'll add it too.

So there you go.  An unknown salvaged camera like thingy becomes a pinhole camera.  It also gives me my first excuse to shoot and develop 4x5 film.  Who knows, maybe I'll be satisfied with this one and not even bother with the variable focal length thing I have in mind.  Any bets on that?

Another Pinhole Project

I'm working my way to 4x5 pinhole, and I've decided to make my first camera out of things I have on hand.  Considering the miscellaneous camera crap I have laying around the house, that's not as hard it may sound. Once I decided not to deal with a shutter on this camera, my plans came together, and there was no longer any reason to put this project off.

This one is still in progress, so I thought I'd show steps without showing what the camera will look like, then wrap it up in another post once it's done.

This first picture is of thin disk of aluminum that will hold the actual pinhole.  You'll have to take my word for it, there is an aluminum disk under that paper.  The paper template is just a quick way of finding the center of the disk.
I cut the disk from a piece of thin aluminum sheet stock with a pair of tin snips.  It's not perfectly round and the pinhole will not be perfectly centered...that's one of the things I love about pinhole.  Close enough is good enough.  BTW, the disk is sized to fit in to a 55mm filter...you'll see why in a minute.
The smaller disk in the upper left is the pinhole as it comes from Lennox Laser.  Nice, handy package.

After drilling a hole in something near the center of my not so round disk, I mount the pinhole with aluminum duct tape.  I like the aluminum tape because it is light tight and strong, yet easily removed and repositioned.  Lots of room for mistakes.
This is the side that will eventually be facing the film.  We'll have to take care of that shiny metal and make sure the installation is light tight.  More on that is coming up.

Next, we see the parts that will be assembled into the pinhole lens-board for this project.  We have, a larger aluminum disk, also not looking all that round, with a hole in the middle...you guessed it...not very round. 
In addition to that disk, we have a 49-52mm step-up ring, a 52-55mm step-up ring, a 55mm uv filter, and our mounted pinhole.  Why did I chose these sizes of rings/filters?  Just because I had them laying around.

Here is the first part of the assembly.  The 52-55mm step-up ring is placed in the hole and retained there by the 49-52mm ring. It would be more economical to use an old 52mm filter with the glass broken out...I'll have to check to see if I have an old filter I don't need any more, to save the step up ring for a higher use.

This shot shows you the pieces that make up the whole assembly.  Now you see the foamie material on the film side of the pinhole disk.  I've also applied a little flat black paint to cover the aluminum tape...being careful not to fill in the pinhole.

Finally, the pinhole disk rests in the step up ring and is retained by the UV filter.  Now, I don't really know that the UV filter is a good idea.  Looks like just one more chance to cause flare to me.  I'll have to see if I have a filter I'm willing to sacrifice and maybe break the glass out it.  Ideally, I'd like to find an old metal lens shade to use here.  I might have something like that in a box somewhere.  If not, Ritz Collectable Cameras in Phoenix as a box of stuff that's always fun to pick through.

So there we have it for now.  A round lens plate with an easily interchangeable pinhole system.  I've just got a few more little steps to go and you'll see the very strange camera that this will become part of.

Pinhole Project Posted

I've posted my first project page.  How to convert an old 6x9 folding camera for pinhole use.

Enjoy.

Javalina

Ilford FP4+, 10 minute exposure, f292, 73mm on 6x9cm