I've wanted to play with pinhole cameras for years, but I never got started. The mess and expense just seemed too far out of reach. A few weeks ago I saw a video on the Makers vlog tthat made everything sound so simple that I decided to just dive in. I gathered up a shoe box, a soda can and some black duct tape and got to work.
In about 15 minutes, I had a camera. I darkened the bathroon as best I could, loaded some photo paper into the camera and headed into the world to make art. After making the exposure, I mixed up the chemicals and developed the photo. I was amazing to see the image come up in the developer. It actualy looked like something. Not great art by any means, but a recognizable image. My dauther Sabrina, and I spent the rest of the day running around taking pictures and playing mad scientist in the darkroom. Here are two of the images.
During the week, I read all I could about the subject. I learned that I should really create an exposure chart for my camera. Normally this involves measuring the pinhole diameter and doing some calculations. Since I didn't have a slipe projector or scanner to help me meacure my pinhole, I decided on an alturnative method.
I took a series of exposures and deturmined that 30 seconds was optimum for that day. The day had a sunny clear sky so using the Sweet 16 rule I figured my camera is about f/185. So far my method seems to be working. Here is the output from those tests.
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