[LargeFormat] Pinhole Photography Thanks

[Guy Glorieux]

Hmmm!  Thanks for your kind comments.  You're making me blush...

Grace, if you're going to do some pinhole experiments and are looking
for some information, I suggest that you go to the ressource page of the
Pinhole day site and browse the reference site.  The site provides a lot
of reference material on the how-to.
http://www.pinholeday.org/support/

One site which I find particularly useful is Lary Fratkins' pinhole
calculator which I used extensively as I was trying to figure out what
size pinhole to use for my giant pinhole.
http://www.mrpinhole.com/calcpinh.html

Check also his exposure guide calculator at
http://www.mrpinhole.com/Exposure.html

If you need any additional help, don't hesitate to contact me off list.

One of the soul searching question that keeps poping in my mind is why
do I do pinhole?  I know that the work I produce gets a lot of positive
comments but I keep asking myself whether it's not a way of becoming
lazy...  -:))

With pinhole, I can circumvent one of the real difficulty I always
encounter with LF photography, (namely getting sharp focus everywhere on
the film plane).  Because pinhole gives me infinitie depth-of-field, I
can forget about Schempflung!  The image is always in (soft) focus.

But the real reason I do pinhole is that if gives me a chance to explore
different kinds of imagery and lets my creativity explore quite easily
what happens when I break the rules (something I enjoy immensely because
it can unfold into some really interesting outcomes).

There is also the fact that pinhole can produce some really interesting
things with  the image.  For instance, I'm still struggling to
understand the nature of the distortions which I got on my giant pinhole
image, compared to a similar image I shot with my ultra-wide angle
(16mm) lens on small format.  On the giant image, I get simultaneously
wide-angle distortions (i-e expansion) in certain part of the image and
telephoto compression in other parts of the image.  The wide-angle
distortions are easy to explain, since I had a focal of 40 in. on a 150
in. image plane (that's roughly 120 degrees angle of view...).   But why
do I get telephoto compression is a mystery to me.  Is this in the
nature of ultra-wide angle imaging to create such a combination of
distortions?

Good day,

Guy

P.S.  Don't sell your lens gear, lens is a lot of fun too...  I've seen
some really extraordinary 11x14 landscapes by Robert Bourdeau at the
Jane Corking Gallery in Toronto (I think that this is what got me into
large format).
But if you want to dispose of your 8x20 gear, I perhaps I could be
tempted...  -:))

----- Original Message -----
From: <Schuyler.Grace@AmericaWest.com>
To: <largeformat@f32.net>
Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2002 4:03 PM
Subject: [LargeFormat] Pinhole Photography Thanks


> I would just like to take a moment to thank Guy G. for publicizing the
> pinhole day activities and his work with that project.  I'm hoping to
take
> my first pinhole shots, since I was around 10 years old, this weekend
as a
> result.
>
> I've been thinking about getting back into pinhole photography ever
since I
> first picked up LF many years ago, but looking through all the great
> photographs (and, frankly, some that weren't so great, in my humble
opinion)
> that were taken around the events in April and seeing the first fruits
of
> Guy's huge work have inspired me to "get back to the basics."  Who
knows, I
> may have an 4x5, 8x10, and 8x20 kit with lenses up for sale in a few
> weeks...
>
> Schuyler Grace
>
> Phone:        480.693.3569
> FAX:          480.693.7555
> CO-MAIL:        52N-AWT
>
>
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