My first 8x10 pinhole image

[Jack_Flesher]

I figured why not? I had the 8x10 camera and film, so why not try out some of those ebay laser-drilled, stainless steel pinholes at $29.99 per set. The shot below is of an old Catholic church outsdide Yosemite. It is up on a hill, so I needed to add rise. Obviously I guessed as to how much and got pretty close. Lens was used at appoximately 150mm f256. Exposure was BDE plus 2 for reciprocity on Fuji 160 Pro (which I rate at 125). I know it's tough to over-expose that film, but still I really didn't need +2 and could have gotten away with 1. My shutter was the dark-slide; I pulled it, counted to 4 and re-inserted it.

All-in-all, not a horrible result, but clearly it's no work of art either

[htmlguru4242]

Wow. That is probably one of the sharpest pinhole images that I've seen! Good exposure and color as well.

Is that a scan of a print or of the film?

[Jack_Flesher]

Thanks htmlguru!

It looks sharp here because you are seeing it at about 1:1 -- an advantage to using larger formats with a pinhole The scan itself shows it not to be very sharp at all. It is a scan of the neg done on an Epson 4990 flatbed at 2400 LPI, 48-bit color (over 2 Gig file size!) then reduced in Photoshop to web size sRGB for posting.

[eddie gunks]

great one! seems your shutter is dead on!

eddie

[DWThomas]

Say what you will, for being taken without a lens, I'd say it's awesome!

DaveT (occasional pinholer)

[htmlguru4242]

That's quite a large file, but I guess that's what you get at that quality and size!

Does your flatbed have a transparency adapter, or is that done just as you would a print?

[Jack_Flesher]

Does your flatbed have a transparency adapter, or is that done just as you would a print?

The 4990 uses what's called a "full area transparency adapter". With it, you can scan up to 8x10 tranny or neg directly. However, since it rests on the glass scanner surface it is one, below the ideal focus point for the lens and two, the back side of the film is prone to genrating newton rings where it touches the glass. So I lay a sheet of anti-newton glass (actually used a sheet of real lightly textured anti-glare framing glass -- cost me $5) on top of the full area adapter sheet and secure the 8x10 tranny or neg directly to that prior to scanning. This raises the film up closer to the plane of focus and eliminates newton rings. It's no drum scan, but isn't bad at all for as large as I print digitally

[Jack_Flesher]

great one! seems your shutter is dead on!

LOLOL! Thanks Eddie! Yes, but truthfully, color neg is very forgiving -- it is *really* tough to over-expose it. You can actually generate some intersting effects by stepping on it by about 6 or 8 stops -- Contrast goes up but you keep some highlight detail and the colors go funky to where the final image kind of looks cross-processed

[Robert Hall]

C'mon, you can tell us... you used a lens, didn't you?

[Jack_Flesher]

C'mon, you can tell us... you used a lens, didn't you?

Here is an "actual pixel" crop from the base scan -- as you can see, it's really not very sharp :