Paper Negative

I’m writing this in April 2020, while the world is locked down due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s World Pinhole Day today, 26th April, and I wanted to do something to represent the strangeness of the last few weeks, which have been spent at home with only occasional forays outside. I decided to make a camera specifically for the event, rather than using one of the many pinhole cameras that I already have. Baked beans have been in short supply during the lockdown, with many people panic-buying tinned food, so I liked the idea of getting “full use” from the baked bean cans I had. So I sprayed an empty can stealth black, and added a laser-cut pinhole which I found in a box of junk and happened to be about the right size for the focal length. The camera has a focal length of 70mm and a pinhole diameter of 0.3mm, giving an aperture of f/235. A card lid was added to make it light-tight. ...

One of the characteristics of early photographic processes is that they are slow. This limits their use for indoor portraiture unless a strong artificial light source is available, or a camera with a very fast lens. Regarding the latter, I came across an interesting camera design that gives a fast working aperture of f/1.7 by using a concave focusing mirror rather than a conventional lens. This camera, invented by Alexander Wolcott and John Johnson, was awarded the first U.S. photographic patent in May 1840, patent number 1582. ...