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This last week I climbed up on the roof, the satellite dish post and the front porch to remove seven pinhole cameras. As I took them down, I took a picture of where each was aimed. These images give Tarja a reference as to what the image should look like while she does her imaging magic.

The cameras referred to above are simply 35mm canisters with a hole drilled in the side, a pinhole lens taped over the hole and a piece of B&W photographic paper inside the canister. You place the camera facing the Sun’s path and put it securely in place.

These were in place from the Vernal Equinox to the Summer Solstice. With luck, they will show the varying path the Sun takes through the sky as the seasons change. The magic is – when you remove the paper from the camera there is a pseudo color image already on the paper without any development.

Since the image will very quickly disappear in normal light, I don’t play with them myself, I send them to Tarja who has more experience with Solargraphy than anyone else I know about.

She sends you back the images and you pick one from the batch to be posted on her website. She will send the cameras to you free of charge. You put it up, take it down and mail it back. It cost about $5.00USD this last time for the postage. All in all, a very cheap investment in both a scientific endeavor and photographic experiment.

http://www.solargraphy.com/

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I got a good deal on some outdated B&W photographic paper (out of date by years – sized 5×7 and 8×10), so I have been making two pinhole cameras from metal cans. One takes up to 7″ paper, the other 10″ without trimming. 

Nothing special at all – just painted inside and out with semi gloss black paint and then a second coat of flat black paint on the insides. I used the calculator on mrpinhole.com for the pinhole dimension that matches the diagonal of the paper and the diameter of the can the closest for the best focus. It appears the exposure times will be ~60 seconds for the 5×7 and ~90 seconds for the 8×10 on sunny days.  Also, I’ll be able to try some solargraphy with them.

Anyway, I figured out a way to blacken out the area around a pinhole to cut down on reflective glare within a camera. The problem with black marker is it is not thick enough to do the job without several coats. Black paint will find a way to enter the pinhole, making it very,very hard to remove it without making the pinhole larger and deformed. 

The method I discovered is very simple.

1) Put a roll of black electricians tape in a freezer.

2)Wait a couple of hours to make sure it is as cold as it will get.

3)Immediately drill a small hole through the tape roll (I used a 3/32″ drill, if I need more, I will use a 1/16″ drill) into and through the paper roll. Don’t press too hard as it will heat up the drill and tape, it took about 5 seconds to drill through each time with a brand new drill bit. Two or three evenly spaced holes around the diameter should do the job well, giving you a lot of masks to use.

4)Wait a couple of hours for the tape to return to room temperature.

5)Peel off a section of tape with a hole and using the pictures below as a guide, put the tape over the pinhole(of course with the pinhole itself showing through the hole, trim it, put another piece on the other side of the pinhole, mount with the pinhole showing through the hole in the camera, tape over the edges.

In the pictures below I was making six film canister solargraphy cameras. The last picture shows them ready to have the photographic paper installed and a final layer of tape around the tops. The pinholes themselves have a ’shutter’ made of a piece of electricians tape with the end folded over as tab for removal. The method should work with other types of pinhole cameras.

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This camera is a forerunner of the current method of building automobiles on assembly line using robots. The parts that are most likely to need adjustment or replacing are mounted first, then everything else is glued, stapled and welded over them.

Short version- using pliers, tin snips and screwdrivers- I removed the entire lower lens assembly except for the shutter. Suddenly, it started working. The pin punch and 20 ounce ball peen hammer I was about to use must have intimidated it.

So, it will be a pinhole sprocket hole camera (perhaps a new name is needed here – perhaps “2HPS” Camera) ?

I do have a possible tip/suggestion for pinhole cameras. This is untried and certainly there are people who have scientific ‘proof’ that it will not work without even trying it. To prevent tiny pieces of dust from getting in the pinhole, I am going to glue a ’slip cover’ over the pinhole. A slip cover in this context is a piece of very thin glass normally used to cover specimens on microscope slides. If this works, it would also help stop the supposed introduction of dust into DSLR cameras when the mirror operates when using a pinhole cap – something I have reservations about. I personally feel the dust in DSLR’s when using pinhole caps is introduced via that two inch hole that is open to the world when lenses and body caps are removed and replaced. Or, is that silly, thinking that more dust will come in via a two inch hole than through a .3mm hole when the mirror moves ?

I feel the massive influx of dust in DSLR’s when using a pinhole body cap is more probably dust that was already on the sensor. Dust on the sensor is very hard to notice in normal usage with optical lenses and the opposite is true with pinhole lenses. Each and every piece of dust on the sensor is visible when looking at an enlarged digital image from a pinhole camera. The dust is the most in focus part of the picture. It is then very easy to look for some devious method of dust introduction upon one’s sensor than admitting one’s sensor was already dirty.

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Today I put together information from several websites and forums that may prove helpful for pinhole sizing. As the notation at the bottom of this message and my disclaimer at the bottom of the right hand column of this blog states – use and proceed at your own risk/peril.

 Sewing & Tapestry Needles / Numbered Drill Sizes

A     B         C              D               E              F

-     13     .092″      2.34 mm     42/43                                   

-     14     .082″     2.03 mm         45*

-     16     .064″     1.63 mm         52        ~1/16

-     18     .050″     1.27 mm         ~55      ~3/64         

1     –       .046″     1.17 mm         56

2     20     .043″     1.09 mm         57*

3     –       .040″     1.02 mm         60*

4     22     .037″     0.94 mm         63*

5     –       .034″     0.86 mm         65/66

6     24     .030″     0.76 mm        68/69    ~1/32

7     –       .027″     0.69 mm        70/71

8     26     .024″     0.61 mm        73*

9     –       .021″     0.53 mm         75*

10     –     .018″     0.46 mm         77*

11     –     .016″     0.42 mm         78*

12     –     .014″     0.35 mm         79/80   ~1/64 

A   Hand Sewing Needle Note- NOT sewing machine needle

B     Tapestry Needle

C     US inch

D     Metric

E     US Numbered Drill * denotes exact match between C and E

F      US Fractional Drill

NOTE WELL:

This information has been gathered from various third party websites and

forums on the Internet. Therefore there is no possible way to guarantee the

accuracy and is posted here for informational purposes only.

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If I could only do 10% of what he has done, I would be satisfied.

Old cameras, old lenses on new cameras, pinhole, etc.

Update: 03/16/2009 I have started to copy some of the techniques found on this website. Do a blog search here for VPK.

GO LOOK !

Galactinus

CLICK HERE FOR FURTHER ADAPTER INFORMATION ON MY BLOG

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NOTE POSTED 04-17-2009 – I have been trying to get a handle on the cross slit project since this was originally posted here. At this moment, and I don’t see my mind being changed, I am abandoning any further work or time. I believe that simply put, since there are two distinctly different focal lengths there will always be one plane that is stretched out of proportion. I am planning to continue into the world of old manual focus M42 lenses and even older lenses from folders on my Canon XTi. Of course, there will still be occasional side trips into pinhole land.

Original text starts here:
I did receive the SD card I needed in order to test my digital stereo rig. As soon as there is a decent day I will be trying it out, along with some more shots with the homemade wood stereo camera and, of course, the newest toy – that double slit camera cap. The main problem for the rest of the year is the weather. With an annual snowfall of over 110″ per year combined with one of the lowest percentages of available sun received, the subject matter until Spring is mainly bare trees and snow. In fact, guess what was in the air just a half hour ago ? 

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The super lens cap is finished, tested and a new page containing photographs has been created.

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This morning I got what I needed together for this project. As I mentioned before, I have turned aside a bit from making a whole camera in order to determine something of the physical characteristics needed. This will be a lens cap on steroids, so to speak. I am using a set of macro rings as the basic structure, single edge injector razor blades for the slit edges, black core foam for the blade holders and information I have gleaned from the internet. If the findings are OK, I will then turn to making it in a 4×5 MF wooden camera with a Graflex roll film back using 6×7 negatives.

A few words here on the internet information – there are many references to slit cameras, however, most are related to either cameras used to determine finish line winners or the very interesting experiments on quantum physics showing how light travels as both waves and particles depending on whether they are being observed or not – real SG1 tech talk, huh ? Try this for a starting point – you will start wondering when the Asgard are going to beam you aboard – I hope you have on clean undies – LOL.   http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=usTOM8vffB4 or search the internet for>> Dr Quantum <<

 Further, the little related to what I am doing is mainly of the sort “I am going to make a double slit camera and I am all ready to make it, and it is going to be neat. Can anybody give me information on how to do it?”, or, “Here is a link to (pictures, information, guidelines, etc)”; a vast majority are either dead or not having anything related to the subject. The three places I did find that had needed information are enough to get going, I will either place the information or the links on my www.photographyhacks.org website after I actually determine if they are worthy.

So, here I am saying I am going to do it AND post pictures yadda, yadda, yadda ……….  Well, I do have good intentions of doing just that and you can determine if I follow through by checking back here for updates. Below is a quick picture of my worktable all set to start.

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On the bus trip I did come up with a design concept for the camera project, then today I happened to spot a website that referred to a company that makes a double slit add on for MF cameras. I checked it out and it is a straight forward design very similar to a pinhole body cap. Taking this one step further, I changed direction a bit and now I am planning on building a double slit add on for my Canon XTi. This will be two-fold. First it will be quicker to assemble, second it will give me practice on the spacing of the slit widths.

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The mechanical part of the project is finished. I just have to wait for an SD card to arrive and get the batteries re-charged. The weather is calling for rain for the next four days, so it appears that somewhere around October 1 I will get a chance to try the rig. The yellow object behind the cameras is a tape measure holding the rig up for the pics.

A construction story and related pictures for this stereo digital pinhole camera are posted on my website > http://photographyhacks.org <, a clickable link is in the Blotlist to the right >>>>>>>>>>>>

Also there is a short ‘how to’ on making pinholes. To make a pinhole cap for any camera with removable lenses, simply make a hole approximately 3/8″ in diameter in the dead center of a body cap. Then glue the pinhole to the inside of the cap, centering the pinhole, and paint as much of the metal flat black as possible without filling in the pinhole, this to cut down on reflections. Do not worry about the exact size of the pinhole for your first attempt. Just do it and enjoy the results.

Update 10-03-2008: I just put a stereo camera DOF – Depth Of Field – table from the 1950’s in a posting today.

Update March 2009: Like everything that seems simple, this project has come back to bite me. I was in such a hurry to get finished, that I never turned on the cameras to sight the placement of the pinholes relative to the sensor. In other words, it turned out cross-eyed, Now I will have to pop off the pinhole assembly and re-attach them more carefully. Oh well.