ALL POSTS! EVERYTHING!

Check out this music video I created for Greg Spero’s beautiful composition “Hills.”

I directed and helped to produce this amazing video.

Woah! It’s been a while. Stay tuned for some more creative content in the coming weeks.

Enjoy this short film I made while studying at Northwestern University’s Film/Video Summer Program.

So let me tell you all very bluntly, I torrent like it’s nobodys business. Am I a bad person? I dare say no! Torrenting, for those who might not know, is something that I’ve heard takes up 85% of the internet’s bandwidth. I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but regardless. Torrenting is a [...]

I just bought some Lomography Redscale film rated 50-200 ISO. Lomography Redscale Film (to be further abreviated as “Lomo RS”) is a color negative film processed regularly in C-41 and possibly ( although I haven’t tried it with this film and don’t really recommend it,) Cross-processed in E-6.

Like most Redscale films, at it’s rated ISO of 200, it creates dreamy Red Saturated photos.

And when exposed at its rated ISO 50 (Didn’t I just say it was rated at 200 ISO?) It washes out some of the red hues.

That confused me and I didn’t understand it when I ordered the film online. But when I recieved the box I read the package. The back of the box said. “Lomo RS Technology offers a very high exposure range. Different exposure settings produce different results. rate the film as ISO 200 for super-intense red and orange colours, rate it as ISO 25 to mix additional tones of blue and green into your image.” with the footnote “Special-effect redscale film with extended exposure range from ISO 12 to ISO 400. Works with all 35mm cameras.”

So after about two weeks of not having anywhere to use ISO 50-200 film. I was invited to a surprise party at a gazebo in a park. Grabbing my Minolta XD-5 (Which has a TTL (Through-The-Lens) light metering with a manual variable ISO dial from 12-3200) shot an entire 36 exp. roll. These are my most favorable results. (Scanning the negatives left a few of the photos lacking compared to their print versions.)

So that’s it for the film. I love it, it has some amazing results I would highly suggest buying this for your SLR camera, however if you you have another type of camera I’d suggest holding off unless you have a light meter. But I’ll warn you, the film seems to only like the lower ISO values (12,25,50) if you have a LOT of light (1/250, 1/500, 1/1000) and a smaller F-Stop (probably less than 8) because that’s when you get the better results, at the slower speeds (1/30, 1/15, 1/8) however it starts to get a little bit grainy as shown in some of the photos.

So being extremely bored a few days ago I found myself staring at my Canon T1i and wondering what to do. I ended up trolling the internet instead of taking some beautiful photos.

But as all things do, they led me back to photography, I found a DIY Pinhole website.

According to Wikipeda : “A pinhole camera is a simple camera without a lens and with a single small aperture — effectively a light-proof box with a small hole in one side. Light from a scene passes through this single point and projects an inverted image on the opposite side of the box.”

It showed a method for creating a Pinhole lens out of an old body cap and some other pieces. (The site I went to is here)

Some History on Pinholes:

Pre Renaissance:

There were references to early pinhole expiriments and observations as early as 5th century BC in China when Philosipher Mo Tsu was the first person to record an image with pinhole technology, using what is called a Camera Obscura. A while later In western europe, Ibn al-Haytham an Arabian Mathematician did experiments with pinhole technology and noted the fact that light travels in a straight line (A principle pictured well above)

Renaissance to First Photo:

Leonardo da Vinci, in his Codex Atlanticus describes image formation in pinhole, however these would remain unpublished until 1797.

In 1580 a pinhole camera was used in the Vatican Observetory to prove to Pope Gregory XIII that the March equinox falls on the 21st of the month instead of incorrectly the 11th. Two years later Pope Gregory corrected the calendar by 10 days, thus introducing the Gregorian Calendar which is still the most widely used Civil Calendar.

1558, in his Magia Naturalis, Giovanni Battista della Porta described the lensless (pinhole) camera. He gained wide regard for his camera obscura shows, and was regarded as the inventor of the camera obscura although this was not the case.

The Term Camera Obscura was coined by Johanes Kepler. In his lifetime, Camera Obscura (Latin for “dark room”) meant a room, tent, or box with a small lens aperture (or simply a pinhole) that was used by artists to draw landscapes or portraits.

An artist using a Camera Obscura to paint a portrait

In the 1620′s Kepler invented a portable Camera Obscura, They were soon found as drawing aids by both artists and amateur painters

A portable Camera Obscura

In the 19th century several large camera obscuras were built as places of education and entertainment. Several still exist today and a few were built in the 20th century.

First Pinhole Photos and beyond:

in the 1850′s Sir David Brewster was one of the first to make pinhole photographs, he also coined the term “pinhole” or “pin-hole”

In the late 1800′s two different “schools” of photography emerged, the “Old School” That believed in sharp focus and good lensed, and the “New School” or the “Pictorialists” that tried to achieve the qualities of paintings. Pictorialists did things such as rub substances on their lenses and print on emlusion covered canvas. Some pictorialists experimented with pinhole photography

Pinhole Photography became the 1980′s, comercial pinhole cameras were sold in Europe, the United states and even Japan.

Mass production of cameras in the 20th century mostly forgot pinhole photography and by the 1930′s the technique was practically forgotten.

In the 1970′s pinhole photography gained popularity but in the US, critics tended to ignore pinhole photography in art

On April 29, 2001 the first Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day(WPPD) was held

Present Day:

So where does that leave us, Well I’ don’t have any of the resources to create a pinhole “lens” for my digital camera and I already had a perfectly good film camera with a pinhole setting. But Idle hands are the devils playground and I thought I don’t need any of those fancy supplies, I’m only working with light, so I got out some tin foil and a sewing needle to create what I call “Super DIY Pinhole.”

Supplies:

- Camera Body

-Tin Foil

- Sewing needle

Process:

So I started out by taking a long strip of tin foil out and wrapping it around my camera. The Tin foil I have is an 80ft x 12 in roll. I pulled out about 4-5 inches and cut it off to give me a 4×12 in piece of tinfoil. (Trust me this is more of an art than a science)

I wrapped it around my camera with the body cap on. Once I had formed a nice seal of tinfoil around my camera I carefully peeled the foil off and set held it lightly in my hands. with the sewing needle, approximate the center of the lens mount circle and poke a hole. Simple as that.

Now taking the body cap off I re-wrapped the foil on the camera, making sure everything was snug I switched the dial to manual and had at.

Those were my first two photos Obviously I wasn’t going for clarity or anything but something could be improved upon, the pinhole shots on my film camera came out better than this. The problem was, I couldn’t find a sewing needle at first and used a small nail. The pinhole was too big. So next I had a thumbtack.

There we go, that’s a little less blurry, but at this point I was mostly trying to remember where the sewing needles were. Once I found them I created a third ‘tinfoil coffin lens’.

Benefits of Digital Pinhole Photography:

Its Digital!: Feel free to take as many shots as you want! Switch your camera into manual and take a shot, rework it, take a few more. No one cares, you can delete them!

Ditch the Tripod: With a DSLR you have the option of choosing the ISO (Light sensitivity) of your photographs. You can throw your camera up to 3200 ISO (Usually night time photography. (for reference: 400 ISO is a regular setting and 800 is a low light situation.)) And with 3200 ISO you’re able to go outside and hold your camera and take rather high speed shots (1/10, 1/25, 1/60) instead of putting it on a tripod.

No Focus: This isn’t much of a problem for some digital photographers, but for anyone who ever has used, or likes to use manual focus, you don’t have to focus a pinhole camera. if you can get the hole small enough, the picture will focus itself. Or be blurry-ish.

Multi Pinhole: I threw a few of these up (in the gallery below) it’s when you poke three holes in the tin foil instead of just one. 3 images!

Downside to My Pinhole Photography:

It’s not a science: Sometimes your pinhole isn’t exactly centered and you have to do a little trial and error. For example, for my last pinhole set the hole was a little high so I had to tip back my camera for every shot to make sure I captured what I intended to.

It’s only Temporary: I’ve made 6 of these in trial and error so far but I’m so happy I did. It’s amazing, but temporary, you can’t take it with you to go take photos in say a forest, or out around town. And you can’t (well I suppose you could) bring tin foil around with you to create pinhole covers. But on a rainy day (or a sunny boring one) this is an amazing time waster.

Here’s a small Gallery of some other pinhole photographs.