I have been itching to use a pinhole camera for a while now. So with some sunshine about today I thought I would give it a go. I do have to admit to taking the lazy approach to this and a few weeks back I had I bought a Polaroid Pinhole Camera, so no biscuit tin and black tape for me.
The reason for using Polaroid was because I feel it sits nicely between film and digital, it is almost as instant as digital, but you get all the chemical smells, and some on your fingers and cloths as well, and that joy of peeling back the paper digital will never come close.
Although there is the normal way to peeling back the paper and getting a clean bordered print, as well as clean fingers, I like it so much more to take "goop" route and peel the layers so I get the goopy negative as well as some amazing and totally unique borders.
The first image here is with clean border and is the back of my house and not particularly interesting, other than to note, that although nothing is sharply in focus nothing is out of focus either as is the characteristics of pinhole photography.... really lovely images.
The next two images for me are much more fun, those amazing borders, the one of the swinging seat I like best it is so inviting. The self portrait where I appear to enter the Matrix shows just how wrong got it...... :-) Shooting in to the sun clearly causes some very interesting flare. But it is so wacky I have to like like it, but it needs to be repeated on a more cloudy day to get the result I actually want.
For those wanting a bit more technical info:
Although the camera is for type 80 film because type 80 is not longer available type 90 Viva still works well. It is ISO 125 and my first guess on exposures was well out, one minute was massively over exposed I got it down to 20 secs in the the shade and 10 sec in the sun. The advantage of using Polaroid film meant I could do test shots rather than shooting off an entire film and possibly get nothing back from the lab. The goop negative of Viva is very cool at the time it is is peeled, but I have found now it is starting to dry out the vibrancy of colours is also fading. I could have scanned it wet but that destroys the glass of the scanner, but maybe next time sacrifices have to be made.
The goop versions will be on here soon.
Please do try this at home ...you will really enjoy it.Labels: pinhole camera polaroid 80 viva 90 instant film marc byram photography
