Happy Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day, just a bit late!

As promised a while ago in Part 1, here are some images from the panoramic pinhole camera I made from a discarded 70mm movie film can. To recap, the pinhole is 0.035 inches, or 0.89mm, with a focal length of 18 inches, resulting in an effective aperture of f/514 at the center of the film. These outdoor shots were taken with exposure times of 8 to 30 seconds on ISO 100 Ektachrome film.

First, an image from downtown Rochester, at the intersection of State & Main (click on this image to open a larger version that you can scroll left and right to see):

Note the streaks from moving cars during the long exposure. This image is typical of what this oddball camera provides - it's a really wide-angle view, reasonably sharp for a pinhole, but marred by severe flare (bright, washed out areas). In fact, the original film image has even more flare, looking very washed-out and thin. I believe that this is due to reflections inside the camera, despite my attempts to quell them with black spray paint. Most objectionable is the bright glow at the very left edge, caused by the setting sun down West Main St. The flare is least objectionable on the buildings, and most objectionable on the streets, making me think that the sky brightness (even though the sky is out of the frame) is the chief contributor. I can imagine the bright sky light coming in the pinhole, bouncing off the large, flat bottom of the can, and onto the film. I did some "adjusting" of the black point in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to make a more presentable image.

Oh, and if you're wondering about some other weirdness on the image, remember that this is a digitized version of a complete roll of 120-format Ektachrome film. The black bits at each end are from the masking tape I used to hold the film in the camera, and near them there are little holes (like snakebite teeth marks) from the metal clips used in the developing machine. You can read the Kodak printing and frame numbers along the top and bottom of the image - normally you'd get 12 6x6cm images on this much film, but I blew it all in one 6x80cm shot!

Second, an image from Brighton, NY, of an old farm that I think has since been made into a park. At least a park, and not more development!

click on this image to open a larger version

I like the wide crop of this scene, the old road leading into it, and the wind-blurred motion of the grass and grape leaves. There is just enough of the barn and silos to show the pastoral context. Like the State St. photo, the parts of this image that look best are those where the sky was blocked, in this case by the trees. The left half and right end of the image, where the sky dominates, are again washed-out by reflected flare light.

And finally, a rural scene, near Mendon Ponds Park, of a warm, golden wheat field.

The uniformity of the horizon, the golden wheat, a few trees - very calming, no? But again, flare, especially toward the sun at the left of the image.

So, moving on to how I digitized the images. Ever try scanning film this big? My first thought was to find a drum scanner, wrap the film around it like a spiral, and scan it that way. However, drum scanners don't actually scan the full circumference of the drum, and there are metal clips and such in the way of wrapping it. I realized I would have to scan it in pieces and reassemble them later. But I didn't want to cut the film!

For my first attempt, I used a lightbox and my digital SLR in place of a scanner. I shot five frames for each piece of film, getting about 10" per frame and including a bit of overlap to allow reassembly later. The lightbox wasn't very uniformly illuminated, however, so the assembled result had dark bands in it, as shown below. Kind of a letdown after all my careful exposure calculations from Part 1!

click on this image to open a larger version

My second attempt was much more successful, using a flatbed scanner with a transparency mode. Again, I scanned in pieces - this time 6 scans of about 8" each to get a whole image. As shown below, I was able to scan three pieces of film at once, advancing them all together, which made this a little easier. Note the use of a clear sleeve to hold the film in place - practical, but not great for sharpness. Luckily, pinhole images aren't too sharp to start with!

Once I had 6 partial scans for each image, I used Autostitch to accurately composite them back into whole images. Autostitch amazes me every time I use it! I then used Lightroom to adjust the black point and white balance, and Photoshop to crop out the ragged edges and resize the final versions shown here. A lot of work for some oddly sized, not-so-sharp images, eh? Hope you like them...