Camera Obscura - Almost back to the roots
Introduction - "umm.. what's that thing?"
I found an interesting piece of a plastic from Heureka shop Located in Kamppi, Helsinki. As you can see from the pic left it's just a box. It includes cylindrical rolls for a film inside and manual switch for the shutter that you have to keep down to expose film. And after creating a small hole in the folio in it - the camera is ready to roll.
My first intention was just to experiment with it without any deeper concern and I even did so with the couple of first sessions but the results wasn't that good really. ;) Also the issue if the stuff is just crap or art is really subjective so I'm not going to state anything. Scroll down with me and watch for the steps.
Wikipedia: Camera Obscura Pinhole camera
1st test
Scanned:
Edited:
ISO200 color film that had passed the best before date over a year a go.
Just experimenting first in low-light conditions because the evening I assembled it was already dark outside and I was keen enough not to wait for proper lighting conditions. The light determination was totally random based on intuition - even more because I had no idea how big the hole should be.
All in all there wasn't much pics that would be ok but that is right how it was supposed to be - experimentation. Although the guy that developed the pics didn't understand at all when I said that "the stuff is randomly placed on the film - they're not placed in fixed width gaps" and he developed pictures that contained only parts of the pictures exposured areas. Which is kind of a unprofessional and I changed the place where to develop the stuff.
Developing prints of some of the pics gave me some idea for the 2nd experimentation round. That took place day after 1st test and again in low light conditions. The edited ones in the gallery above are all changed to monochrome as the colors was too dominated by the tungsten.
2nd session - Two rolls of color film
Scanned:
Edited:
ISO100 and ISO200 color films
Still going on with just the gut-feeling in low-light conditions. Photographed mostly people which are not that easy with very long exposures and of course the only static subjects seem to be the ones that worked much better.
Seems that as I do not have a scanner that would be able to scan negatives I just have to order prints of the pictures and then scan them. Not probably the best way to go but I don't think I will lose much of accuracy or anything in this case. =)
At least this time I got proper service with developing the pictures. Mentioned couple of things: First of all my exposure times are not long enough at all - I even documented them this time. Also my pinhole should be smaller and I don't have any way to meter that small differences. I'm getting to the re-inventing the wheel part and I probably just should check some of the facts before trying to struggle with some basic things.
3rd session - Two rolls of ISO200 color film
Scanned:
Edited:
This time I did some outdoor shooting as well because the weathers are starting to look more manageable day by day. Also I even tried to calculate a bit of exposure times and that kind of stuff. Getting familiar with the really basic maths behind everything was nice but also found out that I couldn't really know my aperture as accurate as needed so I just have to trust on estimates.
Next step is to go for the black&white films and those are already on fire. Just need some time to shoot some more and develop etc. Now that I know how the things work I feel ok to use this nice application. Although it doesn't really help much when I have films that reciprocity failure factors are not included there.
4th set - Black & White 1
Going even more artistic! Shooted some B&W films and here's some of the first set scanned.
5th set - Black & White from color film
This time the stuff is shooted on color film but no idea why they developed the color film to grayscale pictures even that I asked them as color. =) Also these were cut quite badly so there might be a connection.
6th - Black & White cars
That was the last film I did for the tests. Thing got a bit expensive to be a small test but it teached a lot. Took me a long time as I forgot to scan these but here they are. That time I did it by metering with rulers and the pictures are quite planned. Low light conditions of course brought a bit challenge to it after all.
Although part of the film got exposed as it got stuck in the thingie so these are missing only one of the pictures I got developed because it was too underexposed.
