K40 pinhole camera test

Post by **ccortez** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 1:30 am

Lunar07 wrote:Ever heard of the new 'new agers' who think that buddhism is to read a book and throw spiritual nonsense at you and talk to you of the bold new spiritual society while they write a check for their recreational drugs?

I think I know what you mean, but I've still never been able to find a drug dealer that'll take checks. ;)

Post by **ccortez** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 1:33 am

And now that I've piped up, I'll have to say...

I do so love the pinhole stuff. I wanna try too. I think we should do some 64T, pinholed and hand-cranked, then hand-developed. And maybe some 500T at night somewhere with lots of neon, then hand-develop cross-process it in C41.

Cool, more techie shit to distract me from pursuing story ideas!

Post by **steve hyde** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 3:11 am

timdrage wrote:Uh-oh... here comes the Off Topic...

Tim, Your pinhole photography is really interesting! I think it would be cool to slow down the images to like 6 fps. Have you tried that?

Steve

Post by **tlatosmd** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 3:17 am

For the record, I made the animated gif and the first, smaller AVI by cutting out the single frames (or what looked like it), for the second, bigger AVI I glued both scans together to one long strip, cut off the perfs, and resized it to 320 in width, then I loaded that long pic into Adobe After Effects and animated it in a constant motion upwards.

That why I'd say the frame-by-frame method is like using a Malteser cross (during projection, it hides the film pulling on from frame to frame from your eyes), while that constant motion must be like using no Malteser cross.

Post by **timdrage** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 12:16 pm

steve hyde wrote:Tim, Your pinhole photography is really interesting! I think it would be cool to slow down the images to like 6 fps. Have you tried that?

Thanks... yeah, I may well try something like that... I'm thinking of having a play around with the full-rez scans in after effects, inspired by tlatosmd's results animating the jpgs... This very short piece of film was just a test really but thinking outside the box i might be able to make something out of it... since there are no real 'frames' per se I could just basically use it as raw imagery to animate... hmmm... yeaaaaahh... I think I'll tear myself away from the internet and give it a go!

Post by **VideoFred** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 12:49 pm

Pinhole = camera obscura = back to the roots.

If my information is correct, the pinhole principle goes back to the year... 1000.

Later, in 1826, NicÃƒÂ©phore NiÃƒÂ©pce discovered light sensitive material: Indea bitumen. He took the first photo ever in 1826. Shutter opening was 8 hours. Then others used light sensitive salts and so on....

Maybe pinhole is so interesting because it's so very basic.
Colors are awesome, who needs drugs if we can do thing like this?

Fred.

Post by **Angus** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 1:04 pm

Good god I wish I'd never mentioned acid now.

And for the record the Americans on this board would no doubt consider me a "bleeding heart liberal" or even "leftie" too...

Post by **timdrage** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 1:49 pm

Sparky wrote:Do you know what caused the dark stripe along the perfs?

On closer examination (I've just rescanned at a higher rez) I've realised that that dark stripe is actually not on the film at all... it's an artifact of scanning I guess, not sure why other than my scanner is a bit poor... some kind of lens-flare-ish effect from the backlight shining uninterrupted thru the sprocket holes maybe?

My new scans exhibit less vertical stripes generally which is nice! tho the sprocket holes dark band is still there. bleah.

Pinhole = camera obscura = back to the roots.

Indeed, i think that's definitely part of the appeal...

Re; the ancientness of pinhole photography, David Hockney's book "Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters" is pretty interesting, he fairly convincingly claims that many great painters actually used pinhole and camera obscura techniques in their work...

Some really cool pinhole and toy camera stuff can be seen at: http://www.junkstorecameras.com/ - that site is one of my main inspirations for lo-tech film experiments!

Post by **VideoFred** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 1:59 pm

timdrage wrote: he fairly convincingly claims that many great painters actually used pinhole and camera obscura techniques in their work...

Yes, they did... Tho project an image and to take over the profile.
Way back in the 17th century! I think our friend Leonardo also did some things with it.

Fred.

Post by **timdrage** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 2:03 pm

Yeah, pretty amazing stuff! Makes me wonder whether actual film photography could even have been invented long ago and then forgotten again... and all the photos faded away!

They should have invented Kodachrome!

Post by **Angus** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 2:13 pm

There's no doubt that as far back as the 17th century some were experimenting with dipping cloth in colour dyes that would fade with light....then setting them up in a camera obscura for hours on a static scene thus rendering the scene on the cloth. Of course it couldn't be viewed often as there was no way then of fixing the image.

It is also known that some artists would project an upside down image of their model onto their canvas using a camera obscura to help get perspective and details correct.

Practical photography with silver compounds and fixable images had to wait a while...for the chemists to catch up with the lens makers.

Probably false, but one suggestion is that the Turin Shroud was created with a camera obscura.

In the British coastal town of Bournemouth there is a camera obscura in the town centre, you can pay a small fee to enter and view an image of the streets.

Post by **VideoFred** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 2:18 pm

Here's another interesting fact:
The LumiÃƒÂ¨re brothers have developed
this color photo system in ... 1904!

Is this not a beautiful picture?

Fred.

Post by **VideoFred** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 2:29 pm

Angus wrote: Probably false, but one suggestion is that the Turin Shroud was created with a camera obscura..

Or something similar.. There was heat too, it seems.
They still do not understand how they did it.

Or was it a miracle after all?

Fred.

Post by **timdrage** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 2:34 pm

VideoFred wrote:Is this not a beautiful picture?

Wow, amazing!

Post by **tlatosmd** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 3:25 pm

VideoFred wrote:Here's another interesting fact:
The LumiÃƒÂ¨re brothers have developed
this color photo system in ... 1904!

Is this not a beautiful picture?

Fred.

Ah yes, Autochrome...

There are supposed to be thousands of WWI Autochrome glass plates collecting dust in archives.

Autochrome was followed by Pre-WWI Cinecolor, living color motion pictures of Wilhelm II and Teddy Roosevelt!