Re: Making pinholes without a darkroom?

How about a minimalist darkroom.

I use very large format ortho film, (8x10) and print with alternative
processes. Most of the alternative processes are Ultra-violet senstive,
which means they can be prepared and developed in room light. Best to use
a room without windows and an incandescent bulb.

I once spent a couple of weeks visiting friends with a home in
Canmore Alberta. I set up a temporary darkroom in their laundry room. I
took some of my best pictures there.

All I need for a darkroom is a room thats dark with a safelight, and a
surface to put three processing trays. I would load and process my film in
the laundry room.

I made an impromptu printing frame out of a piece of glass, a sheet of
plywood and a some large spring clips.

To print I would put sandwich the negative and a piece of coated cyanotype
paper and take it outside in the sun til it looked properly exposed. Take
it inside and process it in a tray of water.

I've toyed with making a processing tube out of ABS tubing - the trick is
getting it light tight and allow the chemicals to flow in and out.

You could buy a big jobo tube for this.

One could then use a large changing bag, or tent or dark closet to load
the film into the camera, and from the camera to the processing tube.

I've also toyed with making a mini darkroom - a largish carboard box with
light proof arm holes. Could load and process film within it.

With a big negative and cyanotype or salted paper processes its not
necessary to have a derkroom to print. The trick is processing the large
negatives.

Another idea is to make a film holder that can be loaded into the camera
to expose the negative, and then somehow used to process the film. Would
need a light tight and water tight film holder. Would only need to
darkness to load the film in the holder. I have no idea if this is
possible.

Polaroid would be much easier.

Gord

On Tue, 15 Jun 2004, Malin Fabbri wrote:

> Hi all!
> I am the editor of a site for alt. proc:
> http://www.alternativephotography.com
> I got a question from one of my visitors... and got intrigued myself.
> Is there any way you can make a pinhole photograph without the use of
> a darkroom? The only thing I could think of was to put a pre-coated
> cyanotype sheet in the back of the camera and then expose, take out
> and wash it. The problem there is the exposure times though...
> somewhere around half an hour I guess. Any better ideas from anyone
> of you?
> Regards,
> Malin
>
>
> =====
> Malin Fabbri
> malin@alternativephotography.com
> Join the newsletter and be the first to find out what's new
> (no spamming - and never more than once a week):
> http://www.alternativephotography.com/newsletter.html
> All about the art of Alternative photography and processes
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
> _______________________________________________
> Post to the list as PLAIN TEXT only - no HTML
> pinhole-discussion mailing list
> pinhole-discussion@spitbite.org
> FAQ at http://spitbite.org/pinhole-discussion/list.html
>

---------------------------------------------------------
Gordon J. Holtslander Dept. of Biology
holtsg@duke.usask.ca 112 Science Place
http://duke.usask.ca/~holtsg University of Saskatchewan
Tel (306) 966-4433 Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
Fax (306) 966-4461 Canada S7N 5E2
---------------------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________
Post to the list as PLAIN TEXT only - no HTML
pinhole-discussion mailing list
pinhole-discussion@spitbite.org
FAQ at http://spitbite.org/pinhole-discussion/list.html
Received on Tue Jun 15 09:10:24 2004