Pinhole swirls

[Perry Way]

I had a busy weekend. 18 sheets of 4x5 through the pinhole camera. It was all I could do to develop them, 8 last night from yesterday's shoot and 10 tonight from today's shoot. Today's shoot I went to one of my favorite places to "farm" photos, an Oak preserve/park. First time with pinhole there. It was like rediscovering the place fresh, for the first time. How would I compose each shot.. everything had to be rethought from shooting my RB67. So the sun was high, it was poking through the canopy in many places, and I made a real point to keep the direct rays from hitting the pinhole dead on. That meant recomposing after I composed sometimes, 3 or 4 times. But I slipped up on one. There in the darkroom, not 5 minutes ago I finished fixing that sheet.. and wow, this is quite unique looking. You can clearly see a pitch black spot (the sun) and then emanating from that point in like a hemispherical manner are rays. It's like rays and swirls.. and the outermost part of it is roughly circular or ovalish. Swirly all over. So much of this interferes with the composition I can't tell what it was I was shooting.

I'll be really looking forward to print this one up to see what it looks like. Maybe it will be a throwaway, but maybe it will be one of those keepers that is hard to duplicate again.

Anyway, we'll get to that bridge tomorrow night or the next or later on this week, but for the moment I'm real curious what it is I've experienced. Has anyone had this happen before? What is this strange effect I'm noticing? If there was a lens on this camera then it wouldn't be making that much of an impact. There'd be refractions and reflections and then that iris effect thingy that causes several disks repeating down a linear fashion but not on the entire negative. What I have is the entire negative affected.

[SMBooth]

Shooting pinhole into the sun is quite interesting, you don't get "lens flair" as such just light rays splitting everywhere

[Perry Way]

Shooting pinhole into the sun is quite interesting, you don't get "lens flair" as such just light rays splitting everywhere

Well this is more than just simple rays. It's also hemispherical swirls.. undulating about like waves going out from a drop of water hitting the surface.

[skinnyvoice]

I've had the rays of light splitting, but not in a swirly way. This was shot on a Zero 2000 6x6

[edp]

If your pinhole is in a relatively thick foil and not blackened, it might be reflections from inside the pinhole 'tunnel'.

I've not managed swirls, just rays: http://www.flickr.com/photos/9295972@N02/2741254693/

[Perry Way]

I've had the rays of light splitting, but not in a swirly way. This was shot on a Zero 2000 6x6

This is an amazing picture. I like that a lot. The rays are part of the picture and not overbearing. They help it actually.

[Perry Way]

If your pinhole is in a relatively thick foil and not blackened, it might be reflections from inside the pinhole 'tunnel'.

I've not managed swirls, just rays: http://www.flickr.com/photos/9295972@N02/2741254693/

Those are some nice pinhole shots on your flickr. Rays are nice, swirls are .. well.. I just finished making some contact sheets. Wow these are like overbearing. In some of these, there is too much swirl so that you cannot make out the subject matter. Anyway, live and learn. So you think the pinhole tunnel causes this eh? Maybe so. It is a brass plate and it's definitely thicker than tin foil. I'm thinking about ripping off this brass and putting actual tin foil in place because I've made a gaff tape/foam board pinhole camera before and it wound up looking real nice (the results). I've been having some issues with this camera not being sharp enough and I think the brass plate is just too thick.

Anyway, a few really decent shots though, and in a few moments I'm going to go do some enlargements. I had a little mishap earlier tonight with a burnt out bulb in the safelight. Drove all over town looking for replacement bulb and it's one of those odd sizes. So for the moment I took some black construction paper and formed a funnel and place the safelight shade on the end, gaff tape it up and then tape the funnel to a cheep hardware store worklight with one of those cheep grips on it that never holds and falls off everything you try to grip it to. Yeah baby, MacGuyver, eat your heart out! Don't try to interfere with my darkroom time! hehehe.

[Romary]

My gut felling (or thinking with fingers, as I would say in French), is that you have difraction or/and reflexion on the edge of the hole. For normal light (e.g. the grass or shoes on your photo) no problem, you do not see any problem. But the sun is a lot more luminous and you create this kind of aspect. On some pinhole, I have see a circle which was obviously a reflexion of the sun on the edge of the hole.

[Perry Way]

Contact print of the offending negative. Well, the worst one. There are others! :rolleyes: I think this has to be that effect a couple of you mentioned with regards to reflection inside the pinhole "tunnel". It's quite interesting looking but totally detracts from the subject. And would you believe this is the negative out of the lot that I wanted the most? Strange how things work out like that...

[Romary]

With pinhole, often, you do not obtain what you wanted to have. This also why I like pinhole.