28 days
 

OK 28 days as seen from my attic window. Details available to the curious.

?? Moon or sun?

I don't know what that is but its cool as hell.

It's the sun. I will keep making these. If you look closely you can see individual traces of the sun's path. At certain times of the year the sun changes altitude more rapidly than other so there is a bigger space between the days. Also the number of overcast days creates different spacing between the paths.

Here is a detail, note the gaps as the sun passed behind clouds.

cool how did you do it ???? video or still ???

Awesome.

Blue solar filter? What's with the wide-angle distortion?

Bravo, fill us in on the equipment. :confused:

HAHAHAHAHA!
Are you all sitting down?
The "camera" is a one quart paint can (unused) with a .040" hole drilled in one side as a pinhole. The hole is a little too big, so the image is a bit blurrier than I'd like. I'd like to find a 1/64 bit or a pal with a laser cutter...

The image is formed on "printing out paper" which is a gelatin silver paper that was common in the early days of photography. It has an excess of silver chloride and so it "prints out" from exposure to strong UV sources rather than "developing out" like modern papers. Remember studio proofs that were orange and faded? Same stuff.

The image comes out orange and brown and reversed (negative). I scanned it into p'shop and reversed the values/colors. Hence, orange-->Blue.

It is extremely slow, when used to print from a negative, exposures can range from several minutes to hours in bright sun. In the pinhole camera a one month exposure for the landscape was barely adequate.

Each day records a different arc. I've got a dozen of these and I am thinking of setting them up all over town. I'll post the images next month. I'm going to check the almanac to see when we get the best separation between the days arcs.

Originally, I thought about doing a solstice to solstice or equinox to equinox image, but I realized things might get clotted.

The wide angle effect is from the curve of the paint can.

The view to the north, about 6 weeks

Awesome! Brilliant! Creative!

More!

Cool as HELL !!!!!
I rember a link some where about a guy that canabolized a scanner and made a camera , crude and slow , but it made some interesting images .

For some REALY small drill bits go to a welding supply store , ask for a tip drill set , a whole selection of small drill bits with a pin vice to hold them , not that expenceve ( -$20. i think ) .

I wounder what would happen if you made different colored celuloid filters , you could experament to see what works bets .

Really cool, foot! :thumbsup: I remember doing some experimenting with pinhole cameras way back in high school photography classes. Interesting and lots of fun!

I can't wait to see more of these.

Do you think they'll let you post from Guantanamo Bay? Be careful, we don't need an orange alert. :lol:

What's it, E.T.?

I've never seen that paint can before in my life. I don't know what you're talking about. :cool:



Billy,
It's the sun making its way across the sky, 28 times.

Zippy,
I've always wanted to do that to a scanner, I lack the real motivation to follow it through. I know I'd get about as far as gaffer taping things together, and then dragging my desk closer to the window...

Thanks for the tip drill tip. I was just about a block away from a welding supply store the other day and I spaced it.

Filters wouldn't do much since the emulsion is essentially B&W. Or Brown, orange and white. The color is introduced in photoshop. Actually it is hard to decide on a color. They all look cool.

Day to Day changes
 

The biggest change in day-to-day position of the sun is around the equinox. The days are getting longer by twice as much now as they did at the beginning of January.

So to get the biggest change from one day to the next, do it in March.

It might also be interesting to do a run that ends at the equinox. I wonder if you would be able to see the difference increasing as it "accelerates".

I'll do that. luckily these are fast, cheap, and out of control.
Well, they aren't really all that fast.

Thanks for the tip.

Want a camera?

Filters wouldn't do much since the emulsion is essentially B&W. Or Brown, orange and white.

I am no expert but you can lighten and darken and do other things with BW film if you use a colored filter , Orange lightens the pic , light blue darkens it , red has an effect as well , look around on the web for BW film filter info . Just a thought .

Zippyt,
True. Most bw film is panchromatic,ie sensitive to all wavelengths or colors of light, falling off in sensitivity at the near infrared end. Some emulsions are hypersensitive to blue light or UV. Some films are more sensitive under incandescent. Tri-x for example, is rated at asa 400 but under incandescent light it is about 500 asa. There are IR films and some that are blue sensitive only. Using filters with these films changes the tonal relationship of the subjects by allowing more or less relative exposure to the subjects depending if they are similarly or differently colored than the filters. eg Red lightens red and darkens blue. Green lightens green and darkens red, etc.

The film for these cameras is actually Printing out paper (http://www.albumenworks.com/printing-out-paper.html)
it is sensitive to the blue end (UV) of the spectrum and is fairly insensitive at that. to make a contact print form a negative it needs about 2 minutes to 5 hours of exposure to direct sunlight. That is why it needs days or weeks in a pinhole camera.

So you could put a filter in front of the camera but two things would happen. First, most filter material inherently filters out UV light, so you would be cutting down your overall exposure. Second, since the emulsion is sensitive to blue light only, then any filter that cuts blue light (yellow, orange, red) would also only be reducing overall exposure, without lightening the reds, yellows and oranges since the film isn't sensitive to those colors anyway.

A filter that passed blue light (blue, violet, green) would still have an exposure limiting effect by virtue of the filter's density and inherent UV filtering and wouldn't lighten those areas relative to the other ones since the film is blind to anything but blue light.

Probably more than you wanted to know, and quite possibly some errors here. This is off the top of my head and I have been suffering a bit from CRAFT lately...

I'll dig around and see if I can find some of my bw filter experiments.

By ALL meens dig around for those pics !!!!!!

You covered what i was trying to express in my know just enough to know i don't know what i think i know but i get the concept sorta kinda way .

I got mine. :D I'll set it up Saturday.

two ideas
 

hey 3ft...

what about cutting a larger hole, say quarter sized, dime whatever, then covering that larger hole with some opaque material that is softer, like electrician's tape. then poking your hole in the tape with something smaller, like a needle. then you could make more than one try, you know, do-overs if it was not satisfactory. you could easily control the piercing with the softer material.

another idea. if you divided the can with a partition and made two separate image areas, could you do a stereoscopic pair of images? maybe just two cans lashed together.

I do like your images, they are very artistic. I would like to try this myself. at almost 48 deg lat we get considerable movement of the sun in the sky south to north in the springtime.

Actually, I am lazy. And yes, a variation of this is to use aluminum can material. There is a pinhole website where you can find the decimal inch diameter of sewing needles which are numbered.

Yes! I like that. I have a headache already from just picturing what that may look like. I have an old stereo viewer. I will have to make one, despite my lazyness.

Thanks! If you want a paint can, let me know. Or if you can make your own can, I'll send you some of the paper. Or you can follow the link to CAW.

Thanks, 3ft, I will rig up a can or two. I haven't done any research yet on how to setup the "canera", do you have any specifics? Drawings? Links?

Thanks in advance.

Since I'm in a valley I need some height, so the best solution is to duct tape it outside my home office window, which faces mostly southward. I just opened the window to check the ledge, now all I need is to find some duct tape.

Don't you have any left in your homeland security emergency kit?

Actually, I put it up an hour ago. I partially enclosed it in a box for a camera I bought and duct taped it outside the window. Considering the amount of sunshine being pumped into my office right now, I should get a great exposure 28 days from now on March 27th. The advantage of doing this in February is how easy it is to calculate 28 days. If it had been January I don't know how I would have coped. ;)

I taped my camera can in place on an upward angle on the window. Since I'm only opening it on Sundays, it has to be accessible but stationary so that the image doesn't move from Sunday to Sunday.

I just learned that I'm going to have to move out sometime in mid March but I'll see if i can get my now ex partner to keep up the tape on and off until the solstice. sigh

my 28 days are almost up. i have to box it up and send it back on the 17th. i can't wait to start seeing how all of these turn out.

Mine is gonna be <b>so</b> late.
I am a wretched human.
:(

yes. yes you are. but we'll probably forgive you when you get your webcam set up.

*Glee!*

As my sisters used to say:
Better late than pregnant :eek:

i am so excited. my can is back in the male to you. 28 days complete. they also happened to have been the 28 wettest days in arizona memory. hopefully this worked. i had a hard time placing this where it wouldn't get moved so it isn't the most exciting scenery.

I live in one of the rainier/overcast parts of the state, with over 225 days of overcastness/rain a year. maybe I could do something in the summer before the hurricanes?

Well you could leave it up for 225 days. That would be awesome.

What would be really awesome would be if we all remembered to check it in 225 days. Seriously though, why not try a super long exposure? Let me know.

excellent! I can't wait.

Promenea, any word? xoxoxoBruce? Richlevy?

Jinx,Lumberjim?

Limey, I haven't sent yours yet. Elf is not the only wretched human being... Soon, I promise.

Here is one from my friend's attic window in Cambridge, NY. You may be able to see the screen in the detail shot.

I wrapped it up yesterday and will mail it today. :3eye:

I put it out on Feb 27th. I will mail it on March 28th.

I started it with every sunday intending to do 28 - got three sundays done. Then my soon to be ex sprang the soon to be ex part on me. So now I've had it open continuously since the 28 of Feb, I need to count the total number of days till I move out completely but at that time I'll seal it up and send it to you. I lost your address in the confusion though, could you send it to me via pm?

Anyway, I want to title it "Final Days"

Is that sad? It sounds a little sad to me.
:(

It is sad but such is life. Sadder to stay together when things aren't right and you can't make them right - yes?

I'm sorry for your troubles Promenea.

Foot, If you're still into this next winter...

Photography never stops. anytime. although as you can see the sun was a bit too high for the can even with it tipped up at about 15º. I'll hit the drawing board again. Maybe lay the can on its side!

Yes, it's a sad and beautiful world.

true, but that means one of you has to move. Tell her you have an important scientific experiment going on and can't move. ;)

ever tried this on a growing plant? or leaves coming onto a tree? or is it more of a bright light thing?

Your grow lights are pretty bright and this could be entered into evidence...

Hey footfootfoot, did you send me a camera (I forgot all about this project)?

I'm the her of the two of us and make less money than him so on my own can't afford the rent on my own on the current place. I've already got a place (hey, maybe a new can camera when I send this one back and I can call it New Beginning).

Well this particular film is so slow, that it is only a bright light kind of thing. but with regular film, you could do stuff with leaves/ time lapse etc.

There was an artist who sowed a seedbed with grass seed (indoors, darkroom) and tehn projected a negative onto the seedbed. The areas that got light, germinated and grew. The grass grew relative to how much light it got so there was a 3D grass photograph. A photograss? anyway, it sounded cool, I never saw it.

Limey, I still haven't sent one yet, but I will soon. Been wicked busy.

I'll post more later.

OK, sorry I'm really pressed for time this week, but I wanted to get these two up. lookout and xob.

I'll reply to other Q's asap. chat amongst yourselves... ;)

Okay, I'm glad i tilted mine up as much as I did. Hope I got it so that it got the full arch. Last day tomorrow and then I send it on back for a 28 day count. 3 sundays followed by 25 days continuous open.

I was afraid I'd screwed that up. I was right.
Oh...I know...It's 3foot's fault. He didn't make it idiot proof.:lol2:

Didn't his directions include waiting for the midday sun, and looking directly at it for a minute or so to get the right angle? :shocking:

You could put a paper towel tube on top of the camera, pointing in the same direction as the pinhole, and block the back end with white paper. At noon, aim the camera so the white paper glows, and fix it in that position.

That way, noon of that day will be centered. I'm not sure whether that's low enough to catch the horizon as well, though.

This gets trickier as the zenith of the sun gets rapidly higher as it approaches Summer Solstice...

you've got to be EFFING kidding me! :mad2: i even had it sitting on top of a fence tilted up. obviously not high enough though. anyway, this is actually reversed. the sun streaks that did show up are to the west in reality.

Well it is going to be interesting with mine since we've had snow for lots of the time and snow should really brighten the whole picture I would think.

Yes, the image is reversed. :)