A box from Freestyle Photo came via FedEx today, which meant that the photo fixer I ordered arrived, which meant that I could try to develop the paper negatives I exposed yesterday in the Anyway35 pinhole camera I made. Granted, I have never developed anything in my life and didn’t even know what a paper negative is until a few days ago. But, TGFTW (Thank God For The Web). After a bit a googling and great advice and encouragement from a real photographer, Chris Keeney, I decided to experiment. The Anyway35 Pinhole is designed to take 3.5×3.5″ paper negatives. The first thing I learned is that it’s hard to cut accurately 5×7 photo paper to 3.5×3.5 in a darkroom.
Lesson #1: build template for paper cutting and make it a little bigger than 3.5x.3.5
With untested pinholes and photo papers the science of exposure times and focus and framing is turned into a crap shoot, albeit an educated by trial-and-error crap shoot. So, I set up a shot that would be in sun and shade at the same time and have differently-textured objects at different depths of field. I also did a shot of the same scene after it clouded over.
Lesson #2: 30-40 seconds in afternoon sun; 120 seconds in cloudy; shade exposure time not yet determined, but I’m guessing at least 3 minutes.
Lesson #3: Developing film/prints takes patience and a modicum of precision (unless you what to pass off mistakes as “artsy”); i.e., fix and wash your prints better!
Lesson #3 was learned when I forgot/was too lazy to double check fixing and wash times. I woefully underestimated the length of time and the amount of agitation necessary for fixing and washing. As a result, I got a mess of spots and streaks on my negative.
Lesson #4: Developing paper negatives “Caffenol” (Folger’s instant coffee crystals, Arm & Hammer Washing Soda, Vitamin C, and water) works and it doesn’t smell like “grim death” as one guy put it. Normal developing chemicals smell worse.
I want to do contact prints from the negatives (the positive “prints” you see below were produced by scanning into Photoshop and inverting the image), but need a 15w bulb and some plate glass. I also need to be more careful adhering the photo paper to my camera back, using less adhesive. Sticky gunk was left on the back of the negatives and that’ll mess up a contact print. Patient rubbing got the gunk off (afraid to take Goo Gone to it), but there are better ways,.
Lesson #5: Digital photography is FAR more efficient and instantly gratifying and easier and everything else, but this low-fi alternative process photography is interesting and gratifying in its own alchemical way. I’m not even considering it photography per se; rather, it’s playing with the play of light on material surfaces and with substances to produce images (I guess that’s what “photo-graphy” means…). Of course, Sara has known this for ages with her analog cameras, but to build a camera from scratch and develop the exposure you took with it goes even further. Yeah, I screwed up the developing, but I got some images. It worked — the Christmas gift tin I made a pinhole camera out of and the Folger’s Crystals mixed with Washing Soda and Ascorbic Acid produced images on paper where there had been none:
My latest invention pictured here is called the Anyway 35 Paper Negative Pinhole Camera. It's called that because you can photograph with it in any orientation because it's a more-or-less symmetrical square and it is structured mathematically/optically around the number 35: the pinhole diamater is .35mm, it takes 3.5in square photo paper, and it focal length is 2×35 = 70mm. Theoretically, these are optimal dimensions for a pinhole camera this size as far as focus is concerned. The effective f-stop is approximately 200. The main part of its body is a Christmas gift tin (approx. 4×4x2 inches) unto which I attached another cardboard gift box (3.5×3.5x.75inches) in order to stretch the focal length. The pinhole/shutter mount is a Canon drilled out camera body cap that is flipped around so that I can screw on a Canon lens cap as a "shutter." (Brilliant idea if I do say so myself). The Anyway 35 is designed for paper negatives that I intend to develop myself with so-called Caffenol-C (Folger's Instant Coffee, Washing Soda, water, and vitamin C). I'll try it out tomorrow if I have time and the weather cooperates.
Volume 25 of the Japanese magazine Otona no kagaku (Science for Adults) contained a kit 35mm twinlens reflex camera. They sold out quickly when released in fall 2009, but I found one at Light Leaks online (for twice the newsstand price). It came today finally and I just put it together. Very brilliant yet simple design. I’ll try it out tomorrow.
Between writing and reading, I’ve spent the past week building a pinhole camera from an empty iPhone 3GS box. The inspiration struck when I was looking around my study for containers to make a camera from and when I saw the box and opened it, it was decided. Remarkably, the height of the interior perfectly fits a 120 film spool. There are even compartments that fit the spools well (including 35mm canisters). The quality of the box — well, it’s an Apple product, so it goes without saying that it’s slick and sturdy. It’s made of stiff smoothly finished flat black cardboard, with the lid covering the entire height of the inner box, enhancing its light-tightness. The interior dividers are black foam core. One could almost simply poke a pinhole in it and use it as is, but it would be nice to have a film advance (and, in the case of 35mm, rewind) mechanism. And a better-than-electrical-tape shutter mechanism. And a padded, grippy base. And a frame count window. So, I found and bought parts (balsa wood, dowels, dowel plugs, metal shelf holder peg, furniture felt pads, some random rubber collar that was from an opened lamp conversion kit at the hardware store, electrical tape, thin flat black sticky back foam, a red frame count window taken from the third Hawkeye Brownie I have). I gutted part of the interior to accomodate both full-frame 120 and 35mm film. I drilled and scraped out holes for dowels that serve as spool holders, as well as holes for the pinhole and shutter mount and the frame counter window. Designed and cut out of balsa wood a sliding shutter. Painted and sharpied all light spots black. Etc. The result is aesthetically very pleasing — worthy of an iPhone box. The almost-too-recessed pinhole might cause vignetting, but that could turn out to be a very good thing. It’s loaded with Fuji Provia 100F right now, ready for testing. If the weather is better tomorrow I’ll give it a spin. In the meantime you get photos of the camera, not from the camera:
I just need to paint the knob silver and make some masks so that I can shoot normal frame 35mm and maybe 24mmx24mm. As is, it’ll expose 56mmx35mm edge-to-edge, across the sprocket holes. Can’t wait to see what comes out of it.
Yet another cool extension for Chrome: Chromey Calculator. A calculator? What a snore….
But this is not your garden-variety calculator. Sure, you can do your pluses and minuses and times and divides with it, and even your sines and cosines and square roots. What’s cool about Chromey Calc is that it uses the Wolfram|Alpha Computational Knowledge Engine so that you can ask it (kind of like those old automaton fortune teller machines at old-fashioned arcades) for just about any kind of measurement in more-or-less regular English and it gives you the answer. If I type “circumference of earth” I get “24901.47 miles”. If I type “height of eiffel tower” I get “984 feet”. If I type “atomic weight of carbon” I get “12.0107″. If I type “temperature of jupiter” I get “-163 deg F”. If I type “speed of cheetah” I get “30 meters/second”. You get the idea. Very fun and useful. It even does conversions: If I type “5 centimeters equals how many feet” I get “0.164″; If I type “1 dollar = yen” I get “yen 89.25 (Japanese yen) (quoted at current rate)”. Very cool. Even cooler: If I type “The answer to life, the universe, and everything else” I get “42 (according to Douglas Adams’ humorous science fiction novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)”. Which is true.
One of Google Voice’s features is the transcription of audio messages into text, which can then be emailed to you. Some people rave about this; I’m just kind of so-so about its usefulness. On the other hand, I love it for jokes and entertainment. Here is a recent message transcription I received, verbatim:
Hello, this is Grandma therapy with the message for anyway. We’re just wondering if you are watching the olympics at all if we’ve been watching women screwing includes you know. Nicole is lot of players and they’re playing today at 5 o’clock and if you are watching looking to stands to get Gary, Deborah would be there and the movie and Richard and Paula and John. You know, the, it’s another cousin and I hope all is daughters. I think maybe. And you know, whatever, so there’ll be some of your company to get you didn’t you. Hope to hear You, yeah You.
