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.

Troika!

We go through life trading youth for experience. It's not a fair trade mind you, but as we've no choice about making it we can only make the best of what we get in exchange. At the cost of a metabolism that allowed me to feast at any opportunity without a care in the world I have at least managed to acquire a greater appreciation for the way in  which things that are better in theory turn out to be otherwise out there in the real world. And while this could be a fitting introduction to any number of topics, today it is about lenses. Specifically it is about the philosophy and practice of building a system of lenses that offers best service within reasonable budget constraints, whatever "reasonable" might mean for any particular budget.

Back when (and it was all about 35mm in those days) I had the notion that at the heart of any lens collection should be a couple of zoom lenses covering every focal length from 28mm (or 24 would be even better) up to 200mm (or 300mm would be even better, with no gaps at any focal length. From there special purpose lenses could be added. Maybe wider wide angles for landscapes or architecture, longer faster lenses for wildlife or sports, and a macro for bugs and the like. Back then I still imagined doing all those things and nearly every imaginable form of studio photography as well. Life has taught me a few things since then, one of which is that specializing in everything is a non sequitur. There were other lessons too, many involving the differences between what sounds like a good idea and what really works. It is here that my notions about the importance of having a continuum of focal lengths got set to the side. Find me on any given day out on a photo walkabout and chances are that, whichever camera system I chose for that outing, I'm carrying three lenses, three single focal length lenses that experience has taught me will almost never leave me wishing I'd packed some other optic. They are my big three, my troika.

Before I get to the nitty gritty of what that means though it's worth taking a step back to see how I went from there to here. There in this case is a time when it would concern me a little if, say I were carrying a 28-70mm zoom and an 80-200mm, that there would be that shot that demanded 75mm's. Not a big deal mind you, but I was careful to plan my lens collection to avoid such gaps. These were the days when the core of my camera menagerie was built around 35mm equipment. At times I owned medium and large format equipment but 35mm remained king for various reasons, one of which was the perceived limitations of the larger kit owing to the fact that I only ever had one or two focal lengths to chose from. Zoom lenses are not that common in the medium format world, and unless there is some optical oddity I'm unaware of, non-existent for large format. It's not that the big cameras didn't get used, just not often enough for me to notice how little difference the lack of an extensive selection of lenses really made.

35mm Troika: 28mm, 50mm and 85mm Nikkors. On any given day I might swap
out the faster 85mm lens for the close focus versatility of my 105mm Micro.

Enlightenment would have to wait for the dawn of what was to become my post digital era when the drastic drop in the price of used professional film equipment made it worthwhile to delay the next DSLR upgrade (still hasn't happened) in order to pick up a Mamiya RB67 to play with. The rest as they say is history so far as my transition back to film is concerned, but the point is that for the first few months when I was pretty much shooting with nothing but the RB I was shooting with just the 127mm lens it had when I bought it. In terms of 35mm equivalent focal length that translates to about 63mm, which seems just a bit to long to be thought of as a normal lens and a bit too short to be considered "telephoto"¹. Suffice it to say that if I had to choose one and only one focal length to use this wouldn't be it. Enamoured as I was by that marvellous beast of a camera I went on shooting anyway and found almost to my amazement that it didn't seem to matter. At times it almost seemed as though the things I wanted to shoot almost magically arranged themselves to be exactly suited to being photographed by that lens. Is there maybe something special about that not quite normal, not quite tele focal length? Apparently not because some time later when I acquired a 65mm lens (32mm equiv.) I found I had the same experience if I used that lens and kept the 127 in the bag most of the time. That need to have a range of focal lengths at my disposal was largely illusory.

Largely. With landscape subjects dominating my work I still found myself craving a wider perspective and the 65mm wasn't quite cutting it. On the other end there were also times when I wished for the reach and more importantly perhaps the compressed perspective of a longer lens. A 50mm (25mm equiv) for the Mamiya quickly became a favourite, I also picked up a 250mm to cover me when something longer is needed. Arguably it's a bit too long but I'm not sure this has ever mattered and considering it was less that $100 with the shipping I can hardly complain. True it's the least often used lens of the bunch, but when I need it, I need it.

It was thus that I completed my first troika, three lenses - wide normal and tele - that keep me covered for nearly everything I consider worthwhile committing to film. Not always, it's true. There are times when something longer, wider or with some other special capability were at hand, but every new piece of kit comes at a premium in terms of space in the gear bag and wear and tear on the vertebrae. Let's also keep in mind that while this combination is what works for me and the way I shoot these days this isn't intended as a general recommendation. Everyone shoots their own way. At the same time what I shoot isn't that unusual in terms of subject matter, and my optical troika could serve equally well were I to branch out into any number of other areas such as portraiture or street photography.

Medium Format Troika: Starting from the left we have a 150mm portrait length tele, 80mm normal mounted
 to the camera and a 50mm wide. This is about perfect for 6x6 square though equivalent focal lengths may vary for
other negative sizes, a little shorter for 6x4.5 for example, and somewhat longer if your camera yields 6x9 negs.

If I could boil the change in the way I approach lens selection down to its essence I think it's best stated thus: while once I imagined that there was some ideal focal length that allowed an image to be framed and composed just so, now it's just a matter of perspective. Literally. In my experience it's enough to note whether making a particular shot look the way I want it to requires the exaggerated perspective of a wide angle, the compression of a longer lens or a neutral normal. Once the need has been matched to the corresponding member of my lens trio the rest is just a matter of framing it all up in the viewfinder. That's oversimplified a little. Strictly speaking perspective is about the relationship between the apparent size of near versus far away objects which is a function of camera to subject distance and the right lens is the one that lets us fit everything in, which is a topic for another day. Out there in the field (or beach or sidewalk...) I don't choose the perspective by selecting a lens, I do it by eye, determining roughly where I need to stand in order to have all the elements in their right proportion and position relative to each other before even taking the camera out of the pack. In doing so I've already chosen the perspective. I'll then attach the lens I think is going to get it all framed up nicely and, truth be told, sometimes I'm wrong about which lens that is. The only really important part is that it's almost always one of the three.

Large Format Troika Starting from the left is the massive 240mm Symmar-S which, at just over 70mm
 in terms of a 35mm equivalent focal length is shortish for the long member of the troika, but less taxing
in terms of bellows draw on the 4x5. Mounted is the very nice 150mm Symmar-S with a 90mm Fujinon
rounding things out on the wide end.

Leaving aside those reasonably rare occasions when I wish I had a lens wider or longer than anything I am carrying, you may be wondering how it is if I pick my spot as I just described, then pull out the camera, how is it that the lens that is just right will always turn out to be one of those three. Or maybe you're not wondering that, I don't know. Thing is it's something I would have worried over in the past. I'd long heard photographers who were as fond of prime lenses as I have since become use the phrase "zoom with your feet". It always struck me as a terrible notion was irredeemably flawed in that it would only work if where you needed to stand to get the subject just so in the frame and where you needed to stand to get the perspective relationships just right happened to be the same spot. The experience of using fixed focal length lenses has taught me that there aren't any such spots any more than there is one and only one valid choice with respect to any of the other myriad decisions a photographer must make. A photograph that might frame up just so with a zoom lens set to 74mm might be slightly different than one framed up equally just so with an 80mm from half a metre further back, but the odds that either one image will contain some elemental brilliance that the other lacks is next to nought.

The take away here isn't that you should ditch your zoom lenses or that that longer telephoto lens you picked up should be relegated to shelf queen status. If you're a zoom lens user you may have been muttering to yourself something along the lines of "but my 28-85 is this whole troika business in one lens!" to which I say fantastic, hope I've given you little a better appreciation of how much can be accomplished within that midling focal length range, now go blow off some film with it. (Or fill up one of those little memory card thingys if that's what floats your boat.) If you're a fan of super wides or maybe longer focal lengths who could blame you. Without a doubt they are part of what gives your work that particular character that makes it yours. If on the other hand you find yourself lustily flipping your way through catalogues of the prestige glass, imagining the experience of cradling high end extreme optics in your hands as you eye blue and magenta glint of the high tech multicoating laid onto a flawless curve wrought into the surface of a piece of exotic optical glass with sub micro-metre precision then I'd suggest a moment's pause to consider whether it just might be the case that some notion of the ideal optical system (with maybe just a hint of avarice tossed in for good measure) has drawn your attention away from what could be accomplished with something much simpler, more common. Don't let the affordability fool you.



1. The photo nerd in me won't allow me simply toss out the term "telephoto" without pointing out that while the word is commonly understood to mean a lens with a focal length in excess of what would be considered the normal range, this usage is sloppy and when it comes down to it incorrect, hence the quotes. When a lens has an optical focal length that is longer than its actual physical length, that's a telephoto. It's generally true that most long lenses have a telephoto design, but not always. The 240mm Symmar-S pictured above for example is not a telephoto. My pedagogical instincts no satiated I'll leave you be. Sorry folks, it's a character flaw I know but I'm working on it.

The Scheimpflug Way

It's easy to understand how allure of working with big, beautiful 4"x5" negatives and the motivation they provide photographers to step up to large format. Since returning to 4x5 photography for a significant portion of my own work the difference this makes has not gone unnoticed. Leaving aside the oft touted benefits in terms of grain and sharpness, images from these negatives seem to exhibit a crispness and presence that seems to come through even when viewing scanned image on a not particularly high resolution screen where you wouldn't expect to see any significant differences when compared to similar images from smaller negatives. 

To be frank however, if this were the only advantage I'm not sure I'd bother. I'm still a believer in the balance of quality, compactness and versatility of medium format for a lot of work. While I enjoy the sort of slow photography approach that large format demands there are situations that simply don't allow for that and I'm sure a good number of my more treasured images wouldn't have come to be if I had to capture them with a large format camera. Oh, and let's not forget every time the shutter opens to expose another sheet of film it costs me $2 before any sort of print is made, and it's only that cheap because I'm using black and white film I process myself. If I shot colour transparency film and had it processed by a lab that figure quickly quadruples. 

As I mentioned in a previous episode what really cinches the case for large format, at least for much of my photography, is the readily at hand ability to use camera movements. When those with even a passing familiarity with the idea think of camera movements the phrase that often comes to mind is "perspective control". Perspective control is nice and now and then I may take advantage of that capacity since it's there anyway, but for the kind of work I like to do a phrase that excites me more is "plane of focus control". While I mentioned this in the aforementioned article, I wasn't able at that time to offer much by way of example other than to present an example of a medium format photograph that, though reasonably successful as is, could have been better if I had the additional sort of control large format photographers take for granted. For those not familiar, I think a bit more explanation of where this control comes from may also be in order.

While you may not have heard the term plane of focus control before you may (or may not) have heard of the Scheimpflug principle that describes the idea in more concrete terms. To understand how photographers can benefit from the ability to use consider first how ordinary hard bodied cameras are focused. The lens barrels of most 35mm, DSLR and medium format cameras will have a focus ring marked with a distance scale. Imagine standing square on to a brick wall exactly 3 metres away. If you set the focus distance on the lens to 3 metres and point then take a picture of the wall it will all be in sharp focus. If we ignore subtleties like optical distortions or the fact that the spot on the wall directly in front of you at eye level is a little closer to you than other parts we can say the flat surface of the wall (Did I say the wall was flat? It's flat.) occupies the plane of focus. Replace the wall with an object at the same distance and it will be in sharp focus to. Objects at different distances, either nearer or farther, will appear less well focused in proportion to how much nearer or farther they are. The difference between the sharp focus distance and the actual subject distance that can be tolerated without this lack of sharpness being noticeable is what the term depth of field means, but no matter how far we stop the lens down it doesn't change how we define the plane of sharp focus.

I don't know many photographers, any actually, who have achieved success photographing flat vertical surfaces like this, but a portrait photographer who typically has a single subject to focus on should not have any difficulty working this way. And if you imagine you're a landscape photographer (not too difficult for some of us) shooting a scene with a winding river about 75 metres distant leading off towards mountains a few kilometres away, having the focal plane at a fixed distance similarly presents no challenge because the nearest subject is distant enough to be sharp at infinity focus just like the mountains in the background. But let's say that you move a little farther on and find an interesting detail along the river bank you want to photograph from only a few metres away while still keeping the distant mountains sharp in the background. Now it's not so easy. The keen among you might consider the possibility of stopping down in hopes you can get them both within the hyperfocal distance zone. You might be able to do it, but then again they might not. Even if it's possible it might require a longer shutter speed than you'd prefer to use and introduces compromises such as the fact lenses don't perform as well when stopped down to minimum aperture.

But what if, rather than being fixed parallel to the camera (or perpendicular to the lens's line of site if you prefer), that imaginary flat surface we call the plane of focus could be angled any which way? Well it turns out that if you aren't bound the way most cameras are to keeping the centre of the lens fixed parallel to that other flat plane, the surface of your film or digital sensor, you indeed can be free to angle the plane of focus any which way. Well, within the limits set by your lens' capabilities at least.

Enter the Scheimpflug principle, which I will attempt to explain in as plane a language as I am capable of (possibly not one of my great strengths I'm afraid). To begin with picture the flat surface of the film as just a small part of an imaginary plane, the film plane, that, like our plane of sharp focus, can extend out to any size we need, and that there is a similarly a lens plane roughly defined by the front of the lens. In an ordinary camera these three surfaces are always parallel to each other. Imagine tilting the front lens forward so that its extended plane is no longer parallel to that of the film. They meet at some point (actually some line before any of you mathematicians are paying attention.) The Schempflug principle says that doing so causes the plane of focus to shift also in such a way that its angle causes it to connect with the other two planes at the same place where they meet. Got it? Didn't think so, but at least I avoided terms such as "oblique tangent" like the Wikipedia page on the subject does. Perhaps a diagram would help.

Here we can see that by tilting the lens forward the focal plane has been transformed from the imaginary vertical wall sitting in front of the camera at whatever distance has been focused on to a horizontal surface that runs along the ground. In this situation if an image were taken of the ground going off into the distance every point along the ground would remain tack sharp from foreground to horizon without any reliance on depth of field to get things "sharp enough". I should mention that a similar effect takes place if the lens plane is kept vertical and the rear film plane is tilted back. The same rule applies about the focus plane shifting so that all three planes meet at a common point, but tilting the film back also results in a perspective shift, exaggerating the relative size of nearer objects, which may or may not be desirable in a given situation.

While I've suggested ordinary hard bodied cameras keep the lens fixed parallel to the film you can achieve this kind of focus magic with SLR/DSLR cameras through the use of expensive and not particularly common tilt-shift lens. Lenses for 35mm size (film or full frame sensor) usually go for in the neighbourhood of $2000, and for medium format let's just say much higher and leave it at that. But the capability that smaller cameras can achieve only through the use of highly specialized optics are just par for the course for large format photographers. This is because instead of the rigid plastic and metal boxes that are the essence of the kind of camera bodies most of us are used to the "box" that forms the bodies of the vast majority of large format camera consists of a flexible bellows supported between two rigid plates, one in front that supports the lens, and one in the back where the film goes. With just a little simple engineering it's easy to design such a camera to allow the orientation of the lens and film planes to be adjusted in all sorts of useful ways. This kind of camera can be generally referred to as a view camera. Not all large format cameras are designed this way, the soon to hit the market Travelwide is a good example, and there are smaller view cameras that shoot medium format size negatives. By and large however large format photography is nearly synonymous with the control you get with all the lens and film plane movements view cameras make possible.

Let's stick to the one we've been talking about however, tilting the lens. That is because of all types front and rear movements possible, tilt (front and rear) is what excites me most. If I could just have that one movement on my medium format cameras I may not have ever gone back to 4x5. There is a medium format camera, the Rolleiflex SL66, that is capable of limited lens tilt and for a short while I was giving some thought into whether ditching all my other kit might leave me enough funds to get a basic Rolleiflex system started but abandoned the idea when my research began to indicate the tilt capability had a bit too many limitations for my tastes. Just as well though, the large format world is not a bad place to be.

So why all the fuss about tilt? I've been getting not too shabby results without it for years after all. Well I'm happy to say this time out I come bearing a good and proper example of exactly what this capability can do for an image. The photograph near the top of this weeks post is one of the first I made with the Wista 45SP I spoke about at length last time. Finding myself in a location I wouldn't have a chance to get back to anytime soon and still in the testing phase with the Wista I brought along the old Iskra to let me grab a few insurance shots. So it is I have a very similar shot done on medium format.

Now I didn't make these to shots with any sort of comparison in mind so I took no real measures to keep them as comparatively identical as possible. Both were shot on Ilford HP5+ and processed in PMK Pyro. They are shot from slightly different positions since I recomposed this second shot to give me something I thought was a little more pleasing with the square format. The lenses, a 150mm Symmar-S for the 4x5 and the Iskra's 75mm Industar are to a reasonable degree of approximation equivalent in terms of focal length. An early 60's Soviet Tessar vs. a more modern six element German optic might not seem to make for a fair comparison it's entirely capable of delivering impressive results and I hope to convince you that this and other differences such as the smaller format don't account for what I am about to show you. While I think both shots look fairly reasonable on screen at the resolution I present them at here, let's see what they look like at higher resolution with a pair of unsharpened negative scans from my Epson V500.

Of course the Iskra shoots a smaller format negative, but it's still a respectable medium format negative and looking closer the lack of sharpness is obvious long before grain becomes apparent. Yes the large format shot was taken at f/22 rather than f/11, but with double the focal length it needs to be stopped down further. The scans are a reasonably close match of the same are of foreground rock a few metres from the camera. When I was using the Iskra I focused on the island which was several tens of metres distant, relying on depth of field for whatever sharpness could be maintained in the foreground. The difference with the Wista image is that I didn't have to chose between the island and the foreground rock, I was able to focus on both at the same time, and I mean bang on critical focus, courtesy of the option I had to tilt the lens forward. As clear as the difference is here, if you open the comparison image up a full resolution you'll see the blades of grass keep showing more detail up to 100% magnification, not just the stalks but the tiny bits of detail on them. It just seems more impressive the closer you look while the comparison shot from the Iskra looks worse. But lest you think the image on the left looks bad because of some overall shortcomings in the image notice that beyond the foreground rock itself even the little bits floating in the water that are nearer to the distance at which the camera was focused don't look nearly so bad. But for the ability to get that foreground in focus without losing sharpness elsewhere there might not be so much to chose between the two shots.

There are other camera movements to speak of such as swing, the side to side equivalent of the fore and aft of tilt, and rise and fall movements to combat keystoning and other perspective effects that might be undesirable in many situations. And for every potential problem these movements have the potential to overcome, they also have the potential to creatively enhance. For example tilt and swing movements can be used to artificially induce a shallow depth of field effect that can often create the illusion that a real scene is a photo of a miniature model. 

All of these movements can come in handy. With the 4x5 cameras I've owned I'm sure I've found occasion to use all of them once or twice. Honestly though I could live without most of them though. All except tilt. To me having a large format camera that lacked that one capability would really just feel like a waste. 

Wista-pon a Star

Shortly after the Wista arrived a camp-out with the extended family provided the perfect opportunity to try it out. I wondered if everyone would be worried that I just up and disappeared at 5am. It turns out no one had the slightest doubt about why I had left or what I was doing. 

It was probably a foregone conclusion that once I started getting my feet wet in the world of large format again it wouldn't be long before the floodgates opened. Just when it seemed the old 4x5 press camera that had been waiting patiently on a shelf for decades might finally be put back into regular service, in a flash it's been usurped. Though it remains a capable instrument, limitations such as it's inability to accommodate larger lenses and the nearly impossible to find lens boards it takes make it a poor foundation for a photographic system. An upgrade at some point in the future seemed inevitable and so when the time came to seek out some wide angle glass the fledgling 4x5 arsenal there didn't seem much sense in trying to make it work with the old camera.

Retro Chic

Weeks were spent researching the possibilities, combing the online auction sites and making the occasional near miss auction bids. At one point I came close to justifying the purchase of a new Chamonix F1 to myself, but blowing the whole budget on a camera with nothing left over for lenses rather defeated the purpose. It wasn't long after coming to my senses that I stumbled upon the used Wista 45SP in the APUG classifieds. It's not often I have to specify that a film camera I found for sale was used, but the 45SP is different. First introduced in 1972 the well heeled consumer can to this day purchase one new with all the innovations Wista has introduced over 40+ years (consisting entirely of replacing the date faux wood panels with black leatherette) for a mere five large, body only. Fortunately examples with a bit more experience can be had for significantly less. The one I found was adorned with the original wood grain vinyl - think 1975 station wagon - which I henceforth decree are retro chic. The seller was asking about the going rate for a similar camera on ebay but this one came with a few extras and I felt better buying from someone who had owned and used the camera.

Better yet, having spent well under half of what the Chamonix I had been eyeing up would have cost I still had a good chunk of budget to work with and it wasn't long before I found a very nice 75mm Nikkor SW to fit the bill. On a 4x5 camera a 75mm lens is roughly equivalent to a 21mm lens on a 35mm camera. That's about as wide as any lens I've ever owned and as wide a lens as I could see myself using regularly, at least with a standard aspect ratio. (Panoramic work would be another story.) I had been thinking of getting a 90mm lens after the 150 Symmar-S I already had, but the extra I mentioned that came with the Wista was a servicable, if not entirely practical, 90mm f/12.5 Wollensak. It's nearly impossible to focus with in anything short of the blazing mid-day sun, but it did mean I had the 90mm focal length covered, at least in a pinch, and the Nikkor seemed too good to pass up.

In the field, the Wista 45SP sporting a new (to me) 75mm f/4.5 Nikkor SW and, above, the result obtained.

Being sturdier and more capable than my old Busch press camera the Wista, not surprisingly, is a good deal more daunting a piece of cargo to deal with when heading out to the field. Significantly more compact than the monorail type 4x5's that are normally thought of as studio cameras, the Wista's ability to fold up into a neat little box the size of a lunch pail never the less doesn't make it any lighter. In contrast to the press camera's 135mm Wollensak lens, I have found that, reasonably sized as it is, the 150mm Symmar-S is still to large to remain on the camera when it is folded up forcing me to remove it and carry it separately. This is one reason the 4x5 kit, with a full set of film holders, light meter, filters etc. is rapidly growing to fill my large photo backpack, the one alternately used fot the Mamiya RB67 and its retinue of lenses and other attachments.

In the past few outings with it I have seen fit to also through the smaller backpack containing my Bronica outfit. I suppose time will tell what sort of balance gets struck between medium and large format but there are times and situations where I still need the Bronica's capabilities, be that rapid deployment, hand holdability or good old centre of gravity considerations. It's easy enough to throw both in the trunk and let the situation dictate which pack to grab when I get out there. I may find carrying the 4x5 just isn't worth it much of the time and that most of my work is still done with medium format. Then again my love of the big negative could just win out. Who knows, this time next year I could be fawning over a new 8x10 camera.

Ready to travel: Inside the trunk of my car with the Bronica kit (left) the
growing large format ensemble (right), and my trust old Manfrotto (lower).

Feet First 4x5

In our last episode I managed to find a plan to shoe-horn large format darkroom capability back into my life without too much disruption to the rest of the household. There's still a bit of work to be done on that front, getting the door fully light sealed and whatnot. It could have been done some time ago but after years of staring at 4x5 camera equipment there seemed little point in using I couldn't put off the urge to get shooting with it any longer. That situation only became more acute when I managed to pick up a 150mm Schneider Symmar-S lens for just under $150 US.

You may recall the post "Success at the Tinker Table" in which I detailed the unlikely triumph of my efforts to get the shutter to my 135mm Wollensak Raptar working again. That was fine for what I intended at the time, but now that large format may begin representing a significant portion of my work again some serious glass is called for. I have fond recollections of the 210mm Symmar-S I owned back in photography school. Whatever else I may have achieved photographically in the intervening years the most luscious prints I have ever made are from negatives made through that lens. Of course the more regular darkroom practice and toned fibre based prints I was making back then may also have contributed, but to me there is no doubt that the Schneider was the best I've ever owned. When finally some eighteen years ago changing life circumstances forced me to admit there was faint hope I'd ever have much occasion to use it again I regretfully sold it. While the Symmar-S series has been superseded in the Schneider line by Apo-Symmars and Super-Symars, it feels like a small, reassuring sort of home coming to see the name back in my photo backpack. 

The images here are from a quick little shakedown outing in the field. It was a simple jaunt out to the stretch of beach I've shown you images from countless times before, but as so often happens things were just a little different than they've ever been before. The inukshuks were the first surprise. Some ambitious individual or individuals had built half a dozen of these structures within about a thirty metre radius along the beach. The shot at the top was of the only one of these that both allowed me enough room to shoot and didn't have some horribly distracting element in the background. It was was just good fortune that I decided to go out that day as when I returned the next day hoping to get additional compositions using the greater selection of lenses I have with the Bronica outfit someone had toppled all but one of these.

The other surprise was the water level. While images of the Great Lakes can appear effectively ocean-like, they lack a proper tide.and the photographic variations that may present themselves as they go in and out. That said wind and weather do combine to alter water levels, and while in my experience it seems as though on average the shoreline has on average been creeping back a bit year to year, this year it has surged forward so that sections of beach I used to walk accompanied by shore birds have been reclaimed by fish. Though it's been a few years since I told myself I had photographed the concrete structure in the above image to death I keep finding new ways, and on this day I saw it for the first time in my own memory not as something 10 metres or more from the water, but as something coming out of the water. It was evening and light levels were getting low enough that combining the light lost through a red contrast filter with a small aperture setting allowed a 15 second exposure, enough to get a nice blur effect with the water to contrast the rough surface of the disintegrating concrete.

While I imagined my lack of a scanner that's built to handle large format negatives would bring the forced discipline that at the very least would compel me to make contact prints I must confess that I've become fairly proficient at scanning both halves of a 4x5 negative and stitching them together with software. While it feels like cheating it has brought a few issues to light. One is that the traditional 4x5 hangers I have been using to develop the negatives have resulted in a few issues that need to be dealt with. The first is that I have gotten some rather nasty scratches that appear to have resulted from the sharp corners of one of the metal hangers contacting the surface of the negative in one of the other hanger during processing. It's difficult, especially in the dark, to keep all the hangers together as a group when agitating or transferring to another tank and I assume this the problem. Another is that on some images I've seen density streaks, similar to those sometimes seen with 35mm film that line up with the sprocket holes, except these seem to match up with the holes in the sides of the film hangers that exist to let the chemistry drain away. If I don't find a solution I'll probably abandon the hangers and get myself a MOD54 unit and process in my disused Paterson tank, with the added benefit of being able to keep the lights on through most of the process. I'm sure there are many more lessons to come as well. In a way it's part of what keeps us all going.

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.

Success At The Tinker Table

Work continues on the next installment of the "Meet the Beast" series. With the challenge of figuring out the video editing software, combined with holiday events that effectively make this a short week for me however it seems like a good time for a brief interlude to talk about other photographic goings on. I haven't used this forum to discuss large format photography here very often. There's the 8x10 pinhole project which I hope to have more on soon, especially with World Wide Pinhole Photography Day fast approaching. I'd have to go back through the archives however to see if I've ever even mentioned that I do in fact own a 4x5 camera that sports a traditional glass lens.

The optically okay-ish 135mm Wollensak Raptar in its once recalcitrant Rapax shutter, now brought to heel.

Part of the reason is that, interesting and excellent as the format is, I'm not currently equipped to do much with 4x5. Even if I could find a 4x5 enlarger that would fit my budget the darkroom is crowded with a medium format enlarger. Nor do I have the capability of scanning 4x5 without stitching, and even then I have greater ambitions for my negatives than a scan can provide. Even so I'm sure it would have been getting some now an then usage if not for the fact the shutter has been on the fritz for some years now, at least until recently.

The camera itself is a Tower Press Camera, which is actually a re-branded Busch Pressman, itself a less well known competitor to cameras like the Graflex Crown Graphic. The lens I have for it is the 135mm Wollensak Raptar with matching Rapax shutter that in all likelihood was the one that came with the camera when it was purchased new, probably some time in the late 1940's to 50's. When it came into my possession in the mid 90's the shutter was sticky, a common afflictions for leaf shutters of this vintage. Setting it for a half second exposure meant the shutter would stay opened for about a full second and so on. I compensated as best I could and the exposure latitude of the film took care of the rest.

When I dug it out last year from the shelf where it had remained almost completely disused through the starting a family, raising young kids years however the situation had deteriorated. Shutter speeds were now all together unpredictable. Sometimes even at the slower speeds the shutter seemed to open and close after the duration set, while at others it might stay opened two or three or more times as long and occasionally even required a little coaxing to close.

The 4x5 Tower Press camera. I've modified mine to suit my purposes, removing the rangefinder and accessory viewfinder to save weight. For my needs the ground glass is the only thing I'll ever use for framing and focusing. I've made a few other modifications including re-skinning it with a burgundy vinyl I believe was intended for upholstery.

My options? I certainly couldn't try to work around it, especially with the price of 4x5 film. I could send it away to one of the more reputable independent service people who will work on a shutter like this, but even if all it needed was a simple CLA the cost of this, combined with two way shipping (probably international) would have exceeded what the lens is worth. The Raptar optics are okay but they're hardly celebrated or sought out. I'd be better off putting the money towards a newer better lens with a more reliable shutter. With nothing else to loose and armed with a few bookmarked sites and an old PDF of the service manual I managed to scrounge, early last summer I made the fateful decision to give it a go myself.

 Now I'm not a complete putz when it comes to this sort of thing, but nor do I have skills enough to dare taking apart anything I'm counting on ever using again. I rated my chance of success as 50/50 at best. For a long time it looked like I had been too optimistic. Based on what I'd read it seemed my best hope was to douse the timing mechanism with enough lighter fluid to clear out the decades of gunk that was slowing everything down. Complicating things was the foolish decision I made not long after I acquired the camera to remove the useless (at least to me) old style flash sync posts. It hadn't affected the workings of the shutter at the time but the missing parts made the innards of the shutter mechanism hard to match up with what the service manual said I should be seeing and it was done so long ago that I had no hope of filling in the blanks from memory.

Never the less I went through several cycles of seeming to have it working only to assemble it all and find there were still problems. Eventually I reached a point where no matter what I did the best I could accomplish was to get to the point the shutter could be cocked, I could press the release and hear noises as though it had fired properly, but this was accompanied by an actual opening and closing of the shutter blades perhaps one time in ten. A difficulty I confronted each time I made a new attempt to get things put back together right was a particular spring that didn't seem to fit back in the way the service manual suggested. I had no idea if I had it in right or if this was responsible for the persistent problem I was having.

For the next half a year I went through spending a day or two trying to get it working, giving up in frustration then coming back to it a month or two later to give it a fresh go. Then last month a breakthrough. Rather than focus on the problem spring I decided to give the whole mechanism a good once over, discovering in the process a loose part that looked suspiciously like a particular piece of the flash sync assembly that had probably been floating around the housing for the better part of twenty years. Once removed the reassembled shutter again fired. The only problem was that it seemed to be firing at the same speed no matter what I set the dial to. Probably that cussed spring. With luck though it would mean just one more foray into the cog-works. With new determination I resolved to reconcile the positioning of this one last part with the diagram in the service manual. And it was then, right then at what might have been the finish line that the one thing I had been so careful to avoid for months happened. Tensioned and nearly into position an untimely slip of the screwdriver tip caused the spring to do what springs are wont, leaping out of the housing into some nook or crevice unknown.

My tinker table is but a small island of semi-organization cleared away from what is otherwise a junk storage area in the dank basement of our century old house. After an hour\s search I had to reconcile the cost of any further wasted time with the microscopic odds of success. If one were looking for a needle in a haystack they might well give up in frustration with the phrase "Forget it, this is like looking for a tiny hair-thin tension spring on Joe's basement floor."

Time to pack it in then. I had a few little boxes of spare camera parts but I had nothing even close to this spring. It's not like I could make a replacement myself was it? Well... was it? I mean that's crazy. Even if I had that kind of hair-thin springy wire there's no way I could twist it into the right part. But did it have to be that kind of wire? All it did was keep tension on a tab as it moved back and forth perhaps a millimetre. As long as I could fashion a part that did that, who cares if it's like the original part. After months of fiddling with that tiny little spring it took five minutes with needle-nose pliers to twist a paper clip into just the right shape to go where it needed to go and do what it needed to do. After all my doubts about how to position the tiny lost spring there was no doubt my paper-clip spring was in there just right.

The shutter has a few little quirks now. For time exposures it doesn't work on the "B" setting on "T" I have to give it a quick press to open the shutter as it will close if the shutter button isn't immediately released. When cocking the shutter if the speed is set to anything slower than 1/25th I have to give the shutter release a little tweak to make it stay. When the shutter is tripped though it fires at the speed set. I don't know that a shutter speed test would find it's particularly accurate, but there's no obvious lag and I don't imagine there will be any need to compensate any longer. Overall it's working better than it has at any time since I've owned it. Losing that little spring proved to be a lucky break after all.

At long last we've started to hit pay dirt. This is a test exposure from the 8x10 pinhole camera which, although it reveals a few issues mostly related to handling sheets of the x-ray film I used, shows that we're really in business now.

What we're looking at is from a scan of a contact print made on Ilford Multigrade RC paper using a make-shift contact printing frame that consisted of a piece of 11x14 picture frame glass, taped along the edges and laid over a left-over sheet of the black felt used in the build. The long white scratch towards the top middle is actually a scratch in the glass I didn't notice at first or I would have chosen a different piece. The black mark in the lower right corner is a fingerprint. Though I handle the unprocessed film with surgical gloves I was having a time of it getting the exposed sheet out of the film holder that way and taking off the glove seemed less risky than continuing to struggle glove on and risking even more damage.

I knew going in that developing the film would be a challenge. Unlike more conventional film if the surface of the unprocessed emulsion is touched it will be permanently visible in the developed negative. To make matters worse the emulsion is coated on both sides front and back so there's no part that's safe to touch. Further, the emulsion is soft, especially when wet, and scratches (both sides) very easily in the development process. At nearly 1/10th the price of conventional 8x10 film though I'm willing to put up with a few challenges. It even has the advantage of being okay to handle under safelights. Handling film in total darkness has become so instinctive that I found I had to keep reminding myself that it was okay.

The preferred method of processing sheets of x-ray film is to put them in stainless steal hangers and processing in vertical tanks. These are hard to find these days and can be a fairly expensive proposition. The most popular way to process large format film generally is to use trays and develop them in much the same way print on photo paper are processed. With delicate x-ray emulsions however it's a virtual guarantee this will result in scratches, mainly from the ridges found in conventional processing trays. Some x-ray film users get around this by using flat-bottomed trays. The ridges are there for a reason though; it's easy for sheets of paper or film to get stuck to the bottom and with no way to work your fingers underneath you may have a time of it getting them out.

In the various forums where thing like photography using x-ray film is discussed I had heard of another method, processing in zippered freezer bags. A sheet of 8x10 film fits just right in a standard large size freezer bag. You can pour chemicals in, zip the top up and do almost anything you want with the sealed bag. I decided to try this. Unfortunately none of the people who mentioned this method went into much detail about how to implement it.

So began the learning curve. For my test shots I drove down the road to the International Railway Bridge between Fort Erie and Buffalo NY and made two exposures. I actually got three negatives as I had accidentally loaded one side with two sheet stuck together and the film is actually transparent enough that there was an image on the sheet underneath. This method requires processing one sheet at a time and I had three to practice with. I spent the first two (the two that were stacked) to learn that having a separate bag for developer stop and fix was not the way to go. The third image, this one, was processed by putting the film into a dry bag, filling it with developer which I poured out into the developer tray when finished, pouring the stop bath into the same bag and dumping it into the stop tray when finished and so on. After fixing I simply filled the bag with wash water, let it sit a few minutes with a bit of agitation and going through several changes of water like this before hanging to dry. This has the added benefit of washing the interior of the bag. I figure each one should be good for a few sheets of film.

I believe the major weakness with this method is visible in the odd density variation seen towards the lower left. Getting the bag closed after pouring a new liquid in can be a challenge. I got the kind that you can feel teeth meshing to confirm you have a good seal, but it can sometimes take a few tries under dim red lights to get both sides lined up properly and all the while the film is sitting only partially submerged in the chemistry. It also tends to float up and get in the way of closure so the operation is further complicated by the need to hold it down. I think what happened here is that the film was too close to the seal and even though it wasn't in the way of the seal it got pinched up there limiting the flow of developer around it. I found it useful to use only enough chemistry to keep the film easily submerged once the bag was laid on its side - about 500-600 mL. More than this made it harder to close the bag and increased the tendency of the film to float up. With a bit of experience I might be able to get reliable results with this method. If not I'll try something else. With a bit of luck maybe the chance to get my hands on some 8x10 film holders may come along.

A final note, getting back to the camera itself, I have given it one of the updates I talked about before. While making the test shot went fairly smoothly it was evident the camera would benefit from a better plan for the shutter than to literally use my hat so this was priority number one.

The idea of keeping the pinhole covered with a simple magnetic sheet, the kind typically used for refrigerator magnets, is so simple I can't believe I hadn't run across it before. All that's needed is a steel washer surrounding the pinhole opening. I thought I would need to replace the aluminium one I had used before this plan occurred to me, but a serendipitous find in one of my boxes of odds and ends turned up a large convexly curved steel washer that fit right over the existing setup. I epoxied everything in place since I didn't want screw heads jutting above the surface and even the large washer seems too thin to counter-sink. I have a large sheet of this magnetic material with peel away adhesive backing, left over surplus from the old family business, that I used to make the  custom magnet in the above photo, but just about any old fridge magnet would do for this. They have enough hold to keep the pinhole securely covered until everything is ready to make the exposure but not so much to worry about jarring the camera when it is pulled away to start the exposure. To end the exposure simply slap it back in place. What could be simpler?

Nearly There

This blog has only been going a few months so I'd be kidding myself to think anyone out there is waiting with bated breath for my next post, but if anyone's noticed it's been a while since the last one hopefully you've guessed the 8x10 pinhole project I've been writing about has been eating most of my free time. I'm happy to report though that things are nearly finished. There's just a few finishing details to worry about but as things stand now it's ready to begin testing. Here's how things have panned out since last time...

Here is how I solved the problem of attaching the cone portion to the rest of the camera. Those are elastic bands, the short thick ones grocery stores use to bunch vegetables. Standard office supply elastics, and other things I tried such as hair bands, just didn't have enough pull. Inside the cone they are wrapped around mirror hangers which are hard to see here since I painted them black. Inside the camera portion they attach to upholstery tacks I didn't drive in all the way. 

After considering a number of fancier options including leaf springs and rare-earth magnets I settled on these simple latches to keep the film holder in place. I wasn't able to find anything by way of ready-made hardware that was suitable for this, but by luck I had a just-right-sized strip of maple in the off-cuts from making the body which in the end is probably better.

I used the plug from a hole cutter as the disk for the tripod socket and after enlarging the central hole pressed in a threaded insert with a bench vice. It was painted black with the spray on Plasti-Dip I used to make the fiberglass cone on my 4x5 project light proof. It's sort of rubbery and you can see a layer sort of peeling off here from the friction of tightening then removing the the tripod quick release plate.  

Here's what it looks like from the business end. There is no shutter at all at this point and I should actually be able to get away without one. Since the film stays in a light tight (I hope) film holder there's no need to keep light from getting in until the dark slide is ready to be pulled. A hat or a dark card over the pinhole should make a serviceable shutter in the short span between pulling and replacing the dark slide. My concern is that the 8x10 dark slides sometime need a bit of coaxing to slide through their groove in the film holders and I may want two hands available for this. It occurred to me too late that a refrigerator magnet would cover the pinhole opening hands free if only I hadn't made that black retaining ring you see from non-magnetic aluminium. Oh well, should be an easy fix. 

I received a box of 8x10 x-ray film about a week ago, so whenever I get the time I should be able to take it for a few test shots. That's not to say I'm done, but barring light leaks or other unexpected issues it' now a functional camera. Finishing touches I'm planning include:

• Some aesthetic finishing touches, especially around the front "standard"
• Swapping out the retaining ring in the front for one made from a ferric metal to allow for my fridge magnet shutter idea
  (Am I the only one who wonders why there's a 'd' in fridge, but not in refrigerator?)
• Adding a second tripod socket to the short side to allow for verticals
• A detachable viewfinder
• Built in spirit levels

Hopefully I'll have results to show soon. As always I'll keep you posted.