As promised, I’ve backtracked to Week 33. After waiting a longer than anticipated time to receive my Ondu pinhole camera, I waited again to have the chance to use it. I purchased the 35 mm/panoramic model which, I must say, is a work of art. Having tried and failed to make my own functional pinhole cameras from film boxes and juice containers, I’m now glad to have left it to the professionals.
I loaded a roll of Acros 100 and began shooting on the standard frame size setting. My exposure guidelines were loose to say the least. I used the little card that came with the camera to guesstimate exposures for bright sunlight, clouds, night. No meters for me! About halfway through the roll I experienced some hiccups in the film advance and suddenly panicked, thinking I might have either overlapped everything or done something else drastically wrong. Being my typical over-reactive self, I re-rolled the entire roll, reset the parameters for pano, and started over. I advanced the film by sheer guess to where I might have got past any actual salvageable exposures, and then shot what was left in pano format. While a lot of the shots I recorded (the one scientific thing I did was take notes on every shot) were either severely underexposed, or multiply exposed to the point of being ruined….I did get some shots I am pretty excited about as a first time pinhole shooter.
These two self portraits are reminiscent of some stuff I did for a very dark series about two years ago. I think I’d like to explore this more.
These were taken at the meditation garden where I often photograph, and one of the rusty old bike my son dragged all the way home from college for no reason
This one I like because it’s a crossover double exposure between the regular and pano formats, showing the reflective surface of my dining room table and my exterior door, overlaid by the meditation bench.
The last three panoramic shots were taken overlooking the lagoon near my house. I’m pretty amazed at how well the reflection came out. I’m excited to go out and shoot some color, using a meter this time.
Week 33: Pinhole! As promised, I've backtracked to Week 33. After waiting a longer than anticipated time to receive my Ondu pinhole camera, I waited again to have the chance to use it.
