Pinhole Photography With My Zeiss Ikon

Before I knew what I was doing, I bought a Zeiss Ikon camera that had been converted into a pinhole and started shooting. Quickly I found it's big brother, literally, on eBay and got to experimenting. Given that pinhole photography is technically a light leak, I'm including it here. 

What you see here is from, at least according to my notes, the first roll I took, thus my first attempts at pinhole photography. Using a the smaller Zeiss Ikon, I shot a roll of Arista EDU Ultra 400 Black and White film at various exposure times on the bulb setting using a shutter plunger. 

My notes read "THE USUAL SUSPECTS", which is a corner table I have in my room. On it sits two watercolors (a shrimp boat which you see, and a creek side which you don't) my grandmother did and a pothos plant, which you see sticking up. I have used these as a testing photo trying different angles, exposure times, and lighting.

Thanks to some awesome folks on Facebook, I have learned the heavy vignetting on the left side is due to shadowing and not a mechanical issue with my camera. This had to have been taken with artificial lighting (I didn't think to register that in my notes....my bad) because the other shots on this roll labeled the same turned out much darker.  To boot, there were several that had shadows in different places. Plus I think there was some alignment issues with the film not being totally flat, though I don't suspect that as much as the aforementioned problems. 

According to what I wrote, I exposed this at a minute and a half, so the shutter plunger (a pinhole photography must) had to be used. Several shots on this roll I over exposed at two, and three minutes, but I was testing different lighting situations. Being new to all this, and lacking the basic understanding of light meters (and the jargon that goes with it) I just have to keep experimenting with pinhole photography. 

While I am not completely obsessed with keeping notes, it has been a goal to record as much as I can to get an idea of what works and what does not. That I failed to write whether this was natural or artificial light is an example of my learning to document what I am doing. Even thought I am a (broke) librarian and naturally prone to keeping order, I don't always live up to the hype created my by fellow punk ass book jockeys. 

To wrap this up: here’s one pinhole photo I took that I particularly enjoyed. Given the subject, and the fact that it actually turned out, I’m doubly happy with it. Shameless shout out to my buddies at Southeastern Camera here in Raleigh for developing these and doing the very best they can with what I hand them.