pinhole?

[discs of tron]

hi. i've heard a bit lately about a trick involving turning an s8 cartridge into a pinhole camera. essentially, you put foil (or i think blackwrap would be best) over a washer, and tape that over the opening in the cart. make a pinhole in the black foil, then, via a melted ballpoint pen tube inserted into the center rotating section of the cart, or other means of your own devising, you advance the film.

since there is no kind of registration whatsoever, the outcome would be abstract, hopefully producing moving fields of color and stuff, perhaps with recognizable frame segments momentarily becoming visible and then disappearing.

i'm wondering if anyone here has tried something like this. i'm eager to give it a shot, but i have no idea how to come up with an estimated "shutter speed", since there would be no very accurate way to judge the home-made "f-stop." usually with pinole photography, the f-stop is calculated to be in the hundreds. obviously, the "shutter speed" is really just how fast you advance the film. i'm thinking of trying it out with some k-40. then, you project the film as slowly as possible. this might be fun for someone with a workprinter to try out, since you have the freedom to experiment with different frame rates.

[CHAS]

You say you've heard about this lately? Where? I've heard plenty about pinhole cameras with regular 35mm still film but never for S8. Sounds like a great idea...you could probably get some cool abstract, experimental footage...then again it could wind up a complete disaster! Let us know how it turns out. Maybe you can write down exactly what you did...

[discs of tron]

i had been thinking of trying some pinhole stuff for a while. there is a company that does precision laser pinholes in body caps for many popular 35mm lens mounts, and i was thinking about getting one for my krasnogorsk (which uses a pentax screw mount.) a guy called bill brown did some pretty cool stuff i saw with a camera he made i guess (maybe he just modded a bolex or something.) so i was thinking about it. then i saw some mention of it on the frameworks archive (a good newsgroup to check out if your into experimental/avante garde stuff.) some guy who taught at hampshire (where i went to school) posted about doing this cartridge trick, and i got interested. i just wondered if anyone here had tried it out. it's a great idea, unique to super 8 in that the cartridge is the camera. (i mean, i guess you could figure out a way to do it with a 16mm mag, but that's a little too complicated for something so experimental.) but i really like the idea of not having any kind of registration. so i guess i'll give it a shot. i'll let everyone know how it goes.

ps-
the more traditional kind of pinhole setup could be done with a beaulieu i guess. one company (in england i think) will shoot a pinhole through any body cap you send them, and since c-mount body caps are pretty plentiful, that might be cool. do beaulieu's have a "b" type feature where you get manual shutter speed control? (like bolexes and 35's etc?) just a thought.

[kandinsky]

http://www.hi-beam.net/fw/fw19/0423.html

[TomFoolery]

very intriguing... i wonder how long of an exposure you would have to have to capture an recognizable image and what would the focal length have to be?

[discs of tron]

with pinhole, the focal length is typically very wide (or i guess, "short,") but i guess it varies depending on the distance of the pinhole from the film plane. the main thing with the recognizable image is that it's only going to last for a duration of a frame, even if you get lucky and the exposed film is at least partly centered on the real frame, (next to the sprocket) my b&h projector has a very slow rate as an option, so it might be cool projected slow. we'll see.

[Actor]

... there would be no very accurate way to judge the home-made "f-stop."

With a pin hole camera the "focal length" is simply the distance from the pin hole to the film plane. The aperture (f/stop) is this focal length divided by the diameter of the pin hole. If the distance from the pin hole to the film plane is 13 mm and the diameter of the pin hole is 0.1 mm then the f/stop is 130.

At one time you could buy calibrated pin holes from Edmund Scientific, literally small disks with precisely cut holes in the center. Whether they still carry these I know not.

... obviously, the "shutter speed" is really just how fast you advance the film.

No, the shutter speed is still how long you expose the film. Let's say your f/stop = 256. In theory you set your film speed and aperture in your light meter and read out the shutter speed. As a practical matter I don't think you'll find a light meter that will let you enter an aperture of f/256, but f/32 should be available. That's 6 stops down from f/256. So set your meter to f/32, take your reading and increase your shutter speed by 6 stops. E.g., if the meter recommends a shutter speed of 2 seconds based on f/32 the you need to increase that to 64 seconds for f/256.

It might be possible to get something recognizable via animation, however 4"x5" pin hole photos are quite fuzzy. With super8 you'll probably get something fuzzy cubed.

[danpuddick]

this is quite a useful place to look

http://www.pinholeresource.com/

I thought of doing some pinhole timelapses but I only have cine cams with fixed lenses.

good luck

[mattias]

... obviously, the "shutter speed" is really just how fast you advance the film.

No, the shutter speed is still how long you expose the film.

?!? if you don't use a shutter and advance the film continously using the take up shaft, how is the speed at which you do this any different from the time you expose it?

/matt

[aj]

Exposing using a cartridge only and handcranking the film without aligning is going to give some jitter. Which is a major S8 problem according to some here anyhow But making ones own film-claw should be do-able. That way things get aligned somewhat.

One better way would be to use a beaulieu 4008/5008. Take-off the lens and fix a pin-hole. Do not wreck the mirror! It is bound to be telephoto as the minimum distance between film and hole is quite large. Take-out the battery and lock the trigger. Then using a screwdriver use the pilot-shaft carefully to advance the film. You have to locate the open-position first and mark it. Otherwise it is still a bit vague. There is also a hard to find B-exposure accessoiry for the Beaulieux.

Another way would be to take out all objective-optics from a Nizo 480 or such. These cameras have a B-exposure function which can then do all the work. Unfortunately the film is very deep inside the camera and you are even more bound for telephoto.

[aj]

but i really like the idea of not having any kind of registration. so i guess i'll give it a shot. i'll let everyone know how it goes

On second thoughts. The lack of registration is probably the only source of movement in the resulting frames. With these extreme long exposures and above proposed good registration you are only going to register the movement of the shadows.

[CHAS]

To bump this up...you folks in London can see some Super-8 Pinhole footage in action...

8/27
London, England: OCATILLO
7pm, Calder Bookshop 51 The Cut


OCATILLO INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SHOW
Evening of short films and live short poetry. 1. Jennifer Nightingale
Pinhole Film No 2 3'. An experiment with a Super 8 cartridge, a pin-hole
lens ­ handcranked using a hairgrip . 2. Robert Robertson circles of
confusion 4'. Audiovisual rack focus in a room in Montreal in summer. 3.
Derek Ogbourne Struggle 12'. Tiny cameras watch the eyes of two
combatants in action. 4. Nick Collins Tidemills 8'30" A lyrical summer
portrait of the South coast. Spike Hawkins reads new poems and classics
from published collections, including 250 grams of poetry. 'Hawkins'
poems are seeds which once planted in your mind grow to conifers.' Peter
Porter. 5. Susana Medina Buñuel's Philosophical Toys 24'. Fetishism
riddles the work of the great Andalusian director, including the foot
fetish 6. Stuart Gurden eye-may-mah 10'50". An oneiric voyage in
Iceland. 7. Robert Robertson Pauline and Soliman 12'. A scene from The
Kingdom, an opera about the Haitian Revolution, directed by Rufus
Collins and Henk Tjon.

[Herb Montes]

I have a link to a site about a pinhole 16mm camera someone made. The camera was built from scratch and hand cranked. I'll see if I can find the link.

This can be done with a Bolex H-model since you can open the shutter in the "Time" mode"

[studiocarter]

I have a "toy" projector, 16mm, that has NO SHUTTER. The movie film holds still in the frame long enough to see the image over the blur between frames. It looks really strange but it works.
So, if you hold the film still for longer than you streak it, you wil see images on the film, too.

[Herb Montes]

Here we are:

"16 mm Pinhole Movie Camera Project"

http://www.wastedlife.org/handcrank/