The making of a pinhole camera…
While many of you are quite familiar with pinhole cameras, here is a brief layman’s description. A pinhole camera works as the old Camera Obscura did, by using a very small hole to project light into a darkened, confined area. Light that passes through this aperture is then projected, upside down, on a wall opposite the aperture. The sharpness of the image is relevant to the size of the opening, and the size of the projection is relevant to the distance between the aperture and the wall that the image is projected upon. As you may (or may not..) remember from Photo 101, the Camera Obscura, or dark room was the precursor to our smaller version, the camera. I won’t bore you with the physics, mostly because I have no idea what they mean, but light passes along the plane of the aperture and is reproduced in correct perspective on the film plane, just as it was thousands of years ago when Aristotle was looking at light passing through a wicker basket.
[Super high-tech graphic example]
Long before you and I were exposing images onto film, master painters were using this technique to create perfect perspective and more realistic images. The Hockney-Falco thesis explains this quite well. (Yes, that is Photographer David Hockney, and no that is not the German Pop star Falco, may he rest in peace). What does this have to do with toy cams? What could possibly be more primitive then the very first application of collecting an image with light and a tiny aperture? Some could argue that the Pinhole camera is Granddaddy of all toy cams. You can make one with a Quaker Oats can, you can even make one from the leftover Spam can from breakfast. You can even make one out of a Truck and drive your Pinhole cam around the world. There are the most basic form of photography, but also one of the hardest to master.
I have had a Holga Wide Pinhole for a while now, and have never really achieved great results from it. After a few uninspired rolls, I just sorta gave up on it. I don’t feel like wasting any more 120 film that I have to drop off at the prolab and then scan. I wanted a small pinhole that would shoot 35mm, and that I could take along with me on my weekend jaunts. I adore the idea of pinhole photography, and wanted to get back to the roots of the art form itself. This year, I told myself, I was actually going to participate in World Pinhole day.
Somewhere in there I was supposed to wind the film a little more…
So onto the Sharan Camera… I have seen flickr pages and blog posts about it, and its been on my list for a while to test. So when the lovely folks at Brooklyn 5 and 10 sent me an Ikimono to give away to you, they also included a Sharan SQ-35 kit for me to test. The first step will be building the camera, which will require a few things that I do not have: patience and patience. Was that redundant? You see I have had another kit here for a while, one that ’snaps’ together to form a 35mm point and shoot, I just haven’t had the time or patience to put it together. But World Pinhole day gives me both the motivation, and a target date to get good at pinhole shooting. Its like training for the Olympics. But with a cardboard camera, and some dark tape. And a Sharpie. And no cardio. I think I can swing that.
At first glance the Sharan is a bit daunting, but after a brief read of the instructions, it looks like we’ll have this guy shooting film in a few hours. The Camera itself is constructed of a very heavy black mat board with plastic rewind knobs. Quality stuff for a kit camera, and it looks like its going to last for a while.
So check back in few days to see how the build went, and hopefully there will be some images to show as well. In the meantime, here are some links to get you started in the world of Pinhole photo, and feel free to send in any links or images that you have.