Portugal Pinholes 1

The camera gear I packed in my carry on luggage survived the flight yesterday. We drove down to Olhao to visit Niobo, a photographic supply store that sells all manner of equipment including a good choice of analogue supplies.

I picked up some Foma and Rollei chems at very resonable prices, the staff there said photographic film is thriving and 80% of their sales is analogue related. Also that schools and colleges still had darkrooms so film photography was part of the syllabus. Amazing.

I also picked up a few bits n pieces such as jugs, thermometer and syringes from the Chinese Shop. The guy at the till just said “breaking bad” which made me chuckle.

Today I popped out to pick up a tripod kindly offered by Anthony when I put a call out on a local FB group. A lovely compact Manfrotto tripod that’s ideal for the 5×4 pinhole camera but a little lightweight for the Sinar F4. Thank you again Anthony.

Also the tripod mount threads for the pinhole camera are deeply set so the Manfrotto mount bolt wasn’t long enough to engage so I had to search through a few jars till I found a random one to cut to the right size.

I’d brought a box of 5×4 inch Foma 100 film. The changing bag for loading the film holders could be a bit bigger.

Thanks to Mat Hughes over on Instagram for reminding me about Foma fil awful/drastic exposure reciprocity. I used my mobile phone exposure app for f231 and it’s reciprocity calculator to adjust exposure times. I think it was pretty accurate.

A Lovely old carob tree in the garden was first up as a test subject. 5 minute 42 seconds exposure.

Then these cacti near the old pig shed. It was getting late in the day exposures were now 14 minutes.

I also adjusted the development time to allow for the reciprocity changed exposures. Suggested adjustments usually range from 10-30% for contrast control especially in the highlights. It was an overcast day and getting late in the day so I just allowed for 10% off the standard dev time with this Foma developer. So 8 minutes at 20C instead of 9.

The Stearman Press SP-445 tank works well so far.

Hanging in the kitchen to dry.

Although subject matter with an “all in focus ” camera needs to be considered, something a bit less cluttered like the cactus image which just looks a mess of information.

Not too bad really. Any suggestions and advice appreciated. Just some quick mobile phone pics… also working without a viewfinder or ground glass screen will take some getting used to. Just point it in the general direction Monty Python style.

This one’s a bit flat.

… and some quick digi mobile phone inversions and tweaks.

I’ve got some old cyanotype chems still so will do sone prints tomorrow. And I’ll knock up a quick mount base for the Sinar F camera to bolt to, so I can just balance it on a stool or table until I source a sturdier alternative.

The Manfrotto from Anthony is ideal for the pinhole camera. Thanks again.