JISC Digital Media goes analogue

Posted by Antony Theobald on Tuesday 21 April 2009 at 10:29am
Tags: flickr | photographs | photography | pinhole | printing |

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Pinhole shot of JISC Digital Media's home in Berkeley Square

Under Nigel's expert tuition, we were soon up and running. Here are some of the results - more examples of our efforts are in the JISC Digital Media Flickr photostream.

Coincidentally, next Sunday April 26 is Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day.

This is how one of our prints looked after we developed it - note that it is a negative:

After scanning the negative print, we converted it to positive using image editing software:

Pinhole shot of the gardens in Berkeley Square with the University of Bristol's Wills Memorial Building in the background. If you look at the larger version on Flickr, you will see that the depth of field extends from the grains of the bench in the foreground (a couple of centimetres from the 'lens') to the Wills building 200-300 metres away.

Step-by-step this is what we did:

1. Find a tin with a tight fitting lid (e.g. sweet tin, coffee tin)
2. Snip a hole out of the lid
3. Cover the hole with a piece of aluminium (cut from a drink can) and carefully gaffer tape it down around the edges to stop any light leaking in
4. Prick a tiny hole in the aluminium using a very thin pin/needle - the larger the hole the less sharp the image will be
5. Sand down any rough edges round the hole
6. Place a small blob of blu-tack over the hole - this is your shutter
7. Put a loop of masking tape in the bottom of the tin
8. In a darkened room under a safe light, place a test strip of black and white photographic paper on the masking tape and close the lid
9. Seal the lid with gaffer tape
10. Back in daylight, place your tin somewhere stable and remove the blu-tack for 60 seconds
11. Depending on the time of day and amount of light, you will need to adjust this exposure time, so be prepared to repeat this process several times with different test strips and different timings to work out the best exposure time
12. In your dark room place the paper into a tray of developer until your image appears (1-2 minutes), then straight into a tray of stop for a few seconds, followed by a tray of fix for a few minutes. Rinse in a bucket of water and allow to dry
13. If your test strip is too dark, it means it has been over-exposed: too much light has fallen on the paper and you need to expose the next strip for a shorter period
14. If it is too light, it is under-exposed and needs a longer exposure time
15. Note that if the paper goes completely black, you probably have a light leak; if it stays very light it may not have been exposed for some reaon, or you may have placed the paper upside down in the tin
16. Once you have worked out the ideal exposure, you're ready to set up the camera for a 'proper' shot - so long as you do so under the same light conditions

More examples of our efforts are in the JISC Digital Media Flickr photostream.

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