Pinhole Day 2016

It's a darn good thing somebody goes to the trouble of organizing the annual Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day. I wrote about the tribulations I experienced during the 2015 WPPD while I was still shaking out some of the bugs involved in using the 8x10 pinhole camera I had built the previous autumn, the details of which you can also find back in the September 2014 archives of this blog. Consisting of a box with a teeny hole at one end, the camera itself wasn't the real issue so much as the here were no real issues with the camera itself on that day so much as dealing with the resulting exposures, namely the contrasty, highly scratch-prone x-ray sheet film employed. I was trying something new so it was the usual case of learning a few lessons and making a few adjustments. The trouble is that with everything else going on in my photographic life I didn't get around to trying out those new adjustments until WPPD 2016 came along and lit a fire under it.

My choice for entry in the WPPD 2016 on line gallery - image #1234 as it happens.

Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day itself is an event simply to celebrate photography in arguably its simplest form and to raise awareness of the power and expressive potential of photography done with traditional materials and tools. It's also a great educational opportunity. Grade school children can build pinhole cameras from materials as simple as a shoe box, baking foil and a bit of tape, load it up with a sheet of photographic paper then after making an exposure develop the image using a simple darkroom setup, all in the course of an afternoon. It's science and art all rolled into one. For me though it's simply a reminder that pinhole photography is something I have in my photographic repertoire, or it's supposed to be anyway. I shouldn't need the reminder, but there it is.

While WPPD falls on the last Sunday of every April my day job allows little consideration for weekends, so as had been the case with the previous two WPPD's I participated in I did not have the full day to work with. Just as well perhaps as with two 8x10 film holders to my name I was limited to making four exposures. I had a few locations in mind that weren't too far from where I work so it was a cinch to get it all done on the way home.

Making the exposures was the easy part though. I still had to deal with getting those large finicky x-ray negatives developed. I wrote about my results from last year in Pinhole Day Misadventures so I won't reiterate the issues I ran into here.  This year however I had the hangers and tanks at my disposal so I wasn't expecting negative scratches to be an issue and as it turns it wasn't. My second concern was the excessive contrast I have been getting from x-ray film with standard film developers. Though it can be developed by inspection under red darkroom lighting, the Xtol I used last year resulted in empty shadows despite developing until the highlights were as dense as I dared. My current standard, PMK Pyro, is a compensating developer and would probably give much better results. The 8x10 tanks however require a full 5 litres of solution, and while I probably had enough on hand to mix that much it would have left me short in short supply for other purposes. Having raw ingredients on hand I did a bit of research and decided on a particular Caffenol formula called Delta Micro. Formulated for low speed, high resolution micro films which have similar contrast requirements it seemed right for the job, and what do you know, it actually worked as well as I'd hoped.

Developing by inspection again I found that, unlike the Xtol which brought up a clearly visible image in about 15 seconds, it was several minutes in the Delta Micro before I could see anything happening at all on the film resulting in just a little bit of panic, holding the dripping film hanger up to the safelight to satisfy myself I saw some sort of image forming. Though I didn't time anything it seemed about 10 minutes until they appeared ready to move on to the stop bath. The negatives looked good, displaying a nice range of tones similar to those I expect from standard negatives. The only trouble I , could see were some areas, mostly towards the middle of the image, where they seemed to suffer from a sort of hazy fog. Maybe this was the result of having x-ray film, with its notoriously short shelf life, sitting in film holders for the better part of a year, or maybe it was all that close examination holding the developing negatives up to the safelight. Future experimenting will be needed to sort that one out.

It wasn't horrible but the negatives were denser and lower in contrast in these areas, creating a challenge in the darkroom, especially since I was contact printing which made it a little harder to judge exactly where to burn. For the most part they contact printed well on Ilford MG-IV RC with a #3 contrast filter which was replaced with a #5 filter when burning in those denser areas. The results were okay-ish, but I gave in and did a bit of extra work on the image of the railway tracks in Photoshop after scanning in the contact prints to help even things out a little more. There is still a little of the effect visible in the image below of the graffitied overpass pillars as it occurred to me the fogged area just happened to fall on exactly the right area of the image to resemble a slight mist, though no such mist was actually present.

Each participant can submit only one image each year to the WPPD online gallery. It's not a competition, there are no prizes, images are not judged or ranked in any way and there are not sort of minimum standards to be met other than that images must have been taken on the day of the event with a lensless camera of some sort. I would have been happy with either of the images here, but the perspective and foreground details made the railway bridge shot an easy choice. I filled out the online submission form and uploaded the image. In 2014, the first year I entered, my image came up as #888, and I was pleased it was something so easy to remember. This year I have image #1234. If I'm going to be lucky like that, why can't it be the lottery. (Answer: Because I don't play.)

There may be a few kinks left to iron out but with these results I can see the potential for achieving a unique look that is desireable and can't be matched using standard lenses. Yes I have plenty of other pots on the go, so to speak which I'll no doubt be writing about with equal enthusiasm in the weeks and months to come. Still, there's no shortage of things I hope to do and explore with pinholes, and there's still plenty of x-ray film in the freezer. Hopefully it won't take WPPD 2017 to get me out with it again.

Pinhole Day Misadventures

The last Sunday of every April is designated Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day (WPPD). To be frank I have no idea who decided this should be so or how they got the rest of the pinhole world to go along with it, but my hat goes off to them just the same. And what with all the bother I went through last year to build a nice hardwood 8x10 pinhole camera it would seem a crime for me not to participate. What follows then is an accounting of the misadventures that so ensued.

My work schedule doesn't heed traditional notions of what constitutes the weekend so I didn't have the day free as I might have hoped, so while having Pinhole Day on a Sunday may ensure as many people have the day free ad possible, for the second year in a row that hasn't included me. Making the best of the situation I packed the car up before heading out to work so I could make a few exposures on the way home. Of the two 8x10 double dark slide film holders I own I loaded one up with x-ray film, the other with Ilford MG IV paper. This would allow me to photograph two scenes on both materials. I also took along my 4x5 pinhole camera with a few film holders loaded with well expired Ilford Delta 400 in case other opportunities presented themselves, but was to put that 8x10 to use on this of all days.

It hasn't had nearly as much use I anticipated after all, not yet at least. There are a few reasons for this but for the most part they boil down to the fact I still don't have a clean reliable way to develop the delicate x-ray film it was my primary intent to use when I decided to build the camera. (Its construction was chronicled across several posts starting with this one last September.) This is exactly what you think it is, the sheets of film they might use at the hospital to see a fractured bone or find the house key someone swallowed in a not entirely well thought out moment. (Apparently these things happen.) These can be used in place of traditional film in large format cameras to yield results similar to orthochromatic emulsions at a price per sheet that can be 1/10th the cost of standard sheet film or even less. That's the case here in North America at least. I once suggested x-ray film to a UK photographer who said he was looking for a more affordable way to do large format and he must have though I had a screw loose when he saw what a British supplier was asking for the stuff.

Using x-ray film presents certain challenges however, not least of which is how easily the emulsion scratches. Try ordinary ordinary tray development and I swear the stuff seems to scratch itself. I experimented with a few methods to avoid this such as developing in extra large zippered freezer bags, but the gold standard is to use stainless film hangers in vertical tanks. Back in school hangers and tanks were the standard way we developed 4x5 film so the idea wasn't new to me, the problem was getting my hands on the hangers. Though used 4x5 hangers can still be found fairly reasonably on everyone's favourite online auction site (it seems like there's some sort of taboo against just saying eBay, and far be it from me to defy convention), this isn't the case with 8x10 hangers. They are scarce enough to require a bit of effort to find, and knowing many of those looking for 8x10 hangers will a) likely have a higher than average motivation to get their hands on such a hard to find item and b) likely have a higher than average disposable income as 8x10 photography generally isn't easy to do on the cheap, most sellers seem to believe it's worth waiting for a buyer to come along who is willing to pay an unruly asking price.

An example of what can happen when x-ray sheet film is developed in the sort of tray most commonly used for pints.
Standard emulsions, the T-Max's, the Delta's and what have you usually fare just fine in the same circumstances.

I got a bit lucky though. While looking for ideas from photographers who use x-ray film I found one who had a small surplus of 8x10 hangers they were willing to part with for a non-gouging price. (As said individual might not appreciate their name getting out there as a potential supplier of reasonably priced darkroom equipment I'll keep them anonymous, but should they ever chance to read this... huge thanks!) Hangers out of the way however, getting my hands on the tanks turned out to be a bigger issue than I anticipated. Even if I found someone who was giving them away shipping alone would have blown any idea of keeping the project low cost out of the water. After a months long search for something that could be remade or repurposed into workable tanks came up empty I got the notion to build a few from scratch. I'd worked with fiberglass for a few times for telescope making projects, and while the results were often not much to look at, if they make boats from the stuff I should be able to fashion a few functional if hideous chemical tanks. As a bonus the box they were shipped to me in had the exact dimensions to serve as a template.

Unfortunately I embarked on the project over the winter. The resin is supposed to be used at something at least close to room temperature and working with anything that noxious anywhere other than our unheated detached garage with the door open was unthinkable. I probably should have waited to even try but by spring I managed to fashion two horrible looking tanks that never the less fit the film holders perfectly.

These beasties may be hard on the eyes, but æsthetics aren't the concern.

If only they held water. My preliminary test fill revealed countless pinholes in both tanks, and a section of one of them that seemed little better than a tightly woven sieve. Some patching up with more fiberglass helped a bit, at least fixing that sieve problem, but it wasn't until I found a can of Leak Seal that an alternative to starting over seemed at hand. This is a spray on product designed to seal up various kinds of leaks and better still covered the fiberglass with a surface that seems very similar to the hard rubber that is one of the two materials tanks like these are usually made of. (The other is stainless steel.) One can was enough to cover both tanks inside and out completely.

It is at this point that our tank building story slams smack into WPPD. The exposures were made as planned, two scenes, each one made once on x-ray film and once on standard RC enlarging paper. I hope to experiment more with paper negatives but while I know I can get an image with the stuff I haven't done the leg work needed to get the most out of it. My hopes were really pinned on the x-ray film shots. While the WPPD site accepts submissions until May 31st so long as they were taken on April 26th, I like the idea of putting results up as quickly as possible while it's recent enough that there's still a bit of a buzz going on. I should hasten to add here that there isn't any sort of contest going on, just a gallery of submissions from around the world made using anything from the latest pro DSLRs fitted with pinhole body caps to taped up toilet paper rolls. Though last pinhole day was also a work day for me, an afternoon start gave me the morning to shoot a roll (using my 120 pinhole camera) develop the film and get it scanned and posted that same day before leaving for work.

My WPPD 2014 submission, arguably a more successful image than this years.

While I couldn't start until after work this year I had it in mind to at least try to post same day again. I even decided to forgo the chance to get a few more exposures with the 4x5 after dinner to get started in the darkroom. The plan was to develop the x-ray film first and hang it to dry, then process the paper negatives in trays which I could then use to make contact prints of the xray film negatives. Though I only had two tanks instead of the usual requisite three I figured I could also use the large tub of water that was going to serve as the final wash as a water stop bath between developer an fix. A chinzy way of doing things to be sure but I wasn't looking for world class results. Flaws can certainly be charming in the world of pinhole photography and the image I chose would be seen alongside ones made with toilet paper roll cameras. Chemistry was mixed, safe lights went up (x-ray film can be handled under dim safe lights) and I was ready for action.

The trouble started when I poured the developer into the first tank. After the Leak Seal treatment I tested for leaks by filling one of the tanks with water, but that was the other tank. I hadn't considered that just because one tank was fine the other one might still leak, but I had a steadily growing pool of developer forming and not much time to decide what to do about it. I'd be lucky not to spill more than half of the developer on the floor if I tried to transfer everything into the other tank in near darkness. The trouble was I had only one tray, the rest were outside the room. I managed to get a good amount of developer in without significant spills, pouring the rest down the drain as the tank had a much larger capacity. Problem number two was that the eco-pro developer (an Xtol equivalent) I had diluted 1:3 didn't seem to be having any effect, there was no sign of an image forming at all after several minutes. To remedy the situation I added what seemed like a reasonable quantity of Dektol paper developer that was luckily within easy reach. No sense measuring anything this off the cuff and I was developing by inspection anyway. The Dektol did the trick. I transferred to the tub of water, dumped the developer mish mash and replaced with fixer and finished up as best I could. The results, predictably enough, were a couple of nicely scratched up 8x10 negatives, though that aside they actually didn't come out too bad. After this I managed to develop wash and hang the two paper negatives, but with the disappointment over the negatives and a mess in the darkroom to clean up I decided to abandon the thought of getting anything posted that night. Making contacts of the scratched up negatives didn't seem worth the bother either so in the end I wound up scanning the paper negatives, inverting them in Photoshop and submitting the one that seemed to work best for me.

I had two to chose from. The image I put in is of a semi-derelict house not far from where I work. This isn't the image I envisioned, but maybe it's not so bad. There's something about this place I've always been drawn to. Nobody has lived there for some time though obviously the property is being kept up to an extent The house itself leaves me with the impression that until it was abandoned whoever lived there did their best with limited means to keep it up, small and humble as it is with its asphalt siding and a major highway running through the back yard. Its unadorned facade beginning to crumble, missing windows that haven't already been boarded up, it bears these inevitable indignities with quiet grace. If this house were a person I imagine it to be an aging man who towards the end of a hard life still makes an effort to present himself in his best suit even though its been patched in a few places and is a size or two too large for him now.

The image isn't clean. It's a little askew and there are numerous marks and other defects that are especially evident in the sky, possibly the results of my efforts to cram enlarging paper into the edge retainers of a film holder that wasn't designed to take anything that thick. It's contrasty as would be expected with a straight paper negative like this. The version done on x-ray film shows detail in the sky which has been blown out here, and much more detail in the foreground that has pretty much just gone to black. These are all things I hope I'll learn to avoid should I begin to explore paper negatives more, but here it all seems to work, Like its subject the image presents itself simply, unabashedly despite its humble nature and the ravages it has suffered.

I've been keeping my eye on this little place, intending stop and photograph it on a day when the lighting or the mood seemed to suit the subject. I may yet return to photograph it by more conventional means when the conditions seem right for it, perhaps when there's a good mist hanging about or some particularly ominous clouds overhead. I could also pass by it next time and find it demolished.