[LargeFormat] The Wyndham Montreal Pinhole Camera Project

[Guy Glorieux]

Hi Clive,
Some time ago, you asked the status of this project.  I've been quite
busy since April 28, working on this project and other priorities, and I
have not had much time to
report.

In a nutshell, it's worked beyond our expectations.  We have a 12 1/2
feet wide by 8 1/2 feet high pinhole image of incredible beauty,
probably one of the largest ever made in modern pinhole history.

Thanks to the support of Wyndham Montreal, we were able to have a 10th
floor room for the WPPD weekend facing one of the most impressive
landscape of Montreal, right in the centre of the cultural area.  We
started setting up our equipment in the room early Saturday afternoon
and worked to make the room completely light tight. By midnight we had
everything pretty well completed, all we had to do was to lower the 3
strips of 50" by 8 1/2 feet photographic paper (kindly supplied by
Ilford Imaging Canada as a full roll of 100 feet) down the frame we had
built and open the shutter, to officially start our WPPD2 experiment.

We chose a 40" focal length to get as wide angle as possible on the
landscape (the image covers from Place Ville Marie to Place des Arts,
with the Mount Royal in the background, for anyone familiar with
Montreal).  We did a bit of a "backswing" with the frame to extend
coverage of the landscape on the side of Place Ville Marie.

There was some question over what diameter pinhole to use.  The optimal
would have been 1.34 mm giving us F/755, much to small given the
overcast weather expected for April 28.  In the end, I chose 1.8mm
diameter, giving us F/564.  This is only a few minutes exposure even on
paper on  a bright sunny day, but under overcast conditions and with
reciprocity playing its trick, I knew that this would be relatively
safe.

In the end, a snow storm forced us to close the shutter around 12:45 on
Sunday, earlier than we had anticipated, in order to avoid a white out
of the image.  While the tests strips we had placed on the extremities
of the frame suggested then that we might be underexposed, the centre,
by that time was quite over exposed.  I guess we had forgotten that we
would experience very heavy vignetting with such a short focal length
(further compounded by reciprocity failure at the extremities).

By Monday morning we were all packed up and leaving the hotel to move on
to the next stage: the processing of the paper negative.  Given the
facilities we were using, we couldn't get started until late evening and
we also had to build handmade processing tanks (5 x10 feet) from 2x4
lumber and heavy gauge plastic.  We used 100 litters of developer and
fix (way too much in retrospect) to fill the trays and unrolled each
strip of 50" x 8 1/2 feet into the trays, one after the other, out into
a quick stop bath and then into the fix.  The negatives were then washed
thoroughly and installed back to dry on same the wood frame we had used
for exposure at the hotel.

The result was just astounding.  Imagine a 12 1/2 feet by 8 1/2 feet
negative image with incredible details in every areas of the image (you
can count the number of chairs on a hidden roof top sundeck of the
Museum of Contemporary Arts and see pretty well  inside the buildings
closeby, enough to count how many chairs there are around the desks or
worktables).  Every details of the architecture landscape are clearly
visible in the image but strangely distorted in some areas of the image
through wide angle expansion and in other areas through telephoto
compression.

Because of the length of the time exposure (a little over 12 hrs), the
whole city looks unnaturally empty from the constant agitation
surrounding this area as if it had been deserted from all its
inhabitants after a major disaster.  Only the buildings, the trees, the
sign and lamp posts and the cars parked on the street are visible with
incredible details.  Very daunting.

The next stage for us is to do a contact print of the paper negative
into a positive image.  This is the trickiest part and we are still
working on tests strips.  We need to illuminate an area 12.5 x 8.5 feet,
and there is about 7 stops density difference between the centre of the
image (closest to the pinhole) and the edges.  At this stage, we are
working with a single lamp projector 15 feet above the print and centred
just above the zone of heaviest density.  I let you imagine the fun of
changing contrast filtration between each tests...!  The goal is to
avoid having to do any burning and dodging by carefully configuring the
way the light spreads over the image and to make 11x14 tests strips each
time we change the configuration.

So far so good.  We have substantially reduced the 7 stops gap between
the centre and the edges, but the last stop and a half is really hard to
tackle....

Once this is solved, we will do a practice run and then do the final
positive print in 3 copies.  That should take place before the end of
the month if we can align all of our own individual schedules with the
schedule of availability of the studio where we are working.

The final outcome promises to be grand.  Imagine, two gigantic prints
from floor to ceiling extending almost 13 feet facing one another: one
positive one negative of the same image and showing a portion of the
Montreal landscape, rarely seen from all of us normally strolling on
ground level, with details going down to the number of rails on the
street sewer traps!

Where next?  First, we have to design frames that will hold  prints that
size and match their natural beauty and then find a proper gallery to
host them.

I would imagine we will show them first in Montreal. But I would also
hope that they will travel to galleries outside the country, in North
America, Europe of perhaps Japan.  The toughest thing will be the find
grants to support that stage of its infant history...

So, in a nutshell, this is the story.  I will undoubtedly post the image
on the WPPD2 gallery, although it will only be a pale shadow of the real
thing.  In the meantime, I have posted an image of the negative on its
drying rack with me on side as a way of gauging the scale of the image
on the Pinhole members' gallery.  Hope you enjoy,
http://www.pinholevisions.org/discussion/upload/gallery2002.php?pic=guy2
2.jpg

Cheers,

Guy