Soxy Fleming

Oh, my!
You can have breakfast and do film with the same “food groups!”
YaY, Fleur and Soxy!

Yes, there is [was?] a coffee group; but don’t know about a pinhole developing coffee group!

they look amazing!!!! what a brilliant job you both did… Oh and thank you for my little package, what a lovely suprise =D

can you tell us what you recipe consisted of, I would love to give it a go..

this is so inspiring

This is fantastic Soxy! – what a fun science pjoject…I must try it! – time to get out the labcoats and safety goggles! :).

awesome and exciting!
you rock!

omg this is unbeleiveably amazing Soxy…. how fabulous and those images are fantastic… really fantastic… can you write a bit more on how you did this? well done top marks and all that….. very impessive

this is so exciting to read about…. you have done really well… they would scan better in a film scanner for sure and you can get the dpi right up to 3600 easily which would help….. and all the exposure times are going to be trial and error depending on the amount of light. But what you have done is so exciting…. I’m so impressed and I’ve done lots and lots of pinholing with all sorts of mental cameras….. so when I’m impressed believe me that I’m impressed….. :)

maybe you can hold the camera in a little vise clamp…. clamp one end to a balastrade or somesuch and have matchbox in the vise bit? just keep playing about with it …. the results you have achieved so far are really something else and for a first go…. wow….!!!

and yes so some journal as you go along with it for sure….. share the love and all that….. wouldn’t it be good to have a pinhole meet up sometime….. I actually have a Holga pinhole camera somewhere and some 120 film in the fridge…. your making me want to take it out for a little bit of an outing somewhere nice and have a playaround with it….... wonderful….. clever you….:)

hi Soxy and never for one minute doubt that you are a real fotographer…. plenty of folks out there with all the gear and no idea…. takes real passion to go the whole hog like this…. your getting right in to the art of the craft which is were the truth of it is…. to catch light in a little tiny box and bring it into being with coffee and washing soda is the mark of a true artisan and that puts you in a whole other league…. get you friend to scan the negs in their film scanner and see how they look …. also the slide mount thing then photo them is also a wild idea … espically as you can stand in the projections and let the image fall on your white tee shirt and all sorts of crazy things like that….. go for it darlin…..

my largest pinhole camera is made from an old 10×8 inch paper box and it works wonderfully well…. the neg are paper of course and being that large yeild very high quality images which I then contact print to make postives but they can also be scanned on a flat bed….. but I need to be in close proximity to a wet darkroom… which is OK I have all the stuff and can set up really quickly…..

I’m moving back into a holga frame of mind though and haven’t really given the holga pinhole the time and love it deserves… that might be the next thing for me…. and I’m also into formatting sequences of images into grids and such like and that could be a lot of fun to play around with….. shooting in such a way as to create contact sheet mosaics…... I’ve done it with 35mm and it’s way fun and very creative but now I want to try it with 120….

I think I have some sort of awfully complicated table that gives the pinhole size as a ratio of the depth of the camera… but I’ll have to hunt it down…. bascially stick to about .3mm and you’ll be pretty safe…. one of the best pinholes I have is a 5×7 paper box but it was for a box of 100 sheets so it’s quite deep…. excellent camera and a good sized box…. paper makes really great negs as well and you can flaff about in the darkroom to bring them up to speed…. but for all around out and aboutness you can’t beat a good old SLR converted to pinhole…. and once you have the aperture down… you can take it to all sorts of interesting places and shot a whole roll before needing to process it which means you don’t have to stop and process every sheet of paper before moving on to the next exposure….. your matchbox camera looks pretty good like that…. maybe just do a few more rolls with that and do lots of bracketing with exposure times….. your images so far are so exciting…... and with access to a film scanner…. you’ll be cooking with gas in no time…...:)

This is outrageous, Soxy! Well done for having a go. I believe that the humble matchbox pinhole-cam was used during WWII as a spy camera, so done well, it can be so much more than it appears. I’m also fascinated by the coffee developing, and have been thinking about trying it with paper negs (finally found the camera that went missing before WPPD).

I’ve got a table of pinhole sizes at rainydays.com.au/priv/pinhole/pinhole_sizes.jpg. There are many formulae for calculating the best pinhole size, but the one I use is: take the square root of the focal length, and divide that by 25. So, for a 100mm focal length, sq root is 10 … divided by 25 is 0.4mm. I’ve made an Excel sheet with calculators for size and exposure; if you’re interested, I’ll tidy them up a bit, and put them online too.

My first attempt at pinhole (30-odd years ago) was with a 126 cartridge; the hole was probably much too big, and I didn’t go much further, but it was a lot of fun trying. Since then I’ve built various cameras, from an 8-inch diameter mailing tube giant to a 35mm film canister.

Here’s the wee film canister:

...and here’s an image taken with it:

(hope you don’t mind my pics in your journal)

The drawback is, it just takes one exposure, but it’s a 10-hole length of film, wrapped around the back of the canister, which has been cut away at the front to half its depth to give a very wide angle of view. Heck, I should journal this… Anyway, I got around the lack of weight by attaching it to another canister filled with washers. It is certainly heavy enough not to move in a breeze, so you could try something like that with yours.

Look forward to seeing more pics – especially if you can scan them as Juilee suggests.

thanks Duncan! yes you must write a journal too. Today I have been making a large format camera out of a biscuit tin. It will take 5 by 7 sheets of photographic paper. I think I am going to have to go and buy some chemicals…..do you really think the coffee developer might work for paper as well as film?
I have a truly ancient bottle of agfa multicontrast….it has a lot of crystals….but reading on line someone suggested that this particular developer lasted for two days after the sun turned supernova! so I’m tempted to give it a go. The paper I will be using is also very old so I don’t think I shall be wasting much just by giving it a go. Go ahead and journal your tables and experiences and feel free to add a link here…this is exciting stuff!

do you really think the coffee developer might work for paper as well as film?

Of course. The dev time and mixture might need to be different than for film, but the basic principle is the same. Re crystallized dev: there’s certainly little to lose by having a go, but if a significant component is crystallizing out of solution, then the characteristics will change. Can’t be any worse than coffe though ;-)

I could kick myself for throwing out some old paper a few years ago. I wasn’t really thinking photography then, let alone pinhole, so out it went. Still have some old 120 film though, which I’ll save for a good opportunity.

It certainly is exciting – I couldn’t agree more!

So in general my coffee developer might need to be stronger do you think for paper? what about keeping and re-using the coffee mixture, do you think it could still work for a few days?

Possibly. Paper dev is usually a more fierce brew than for film, but you might just need to vary the ratio of coffee to soda. However, having a softer process with paper wouldn’t be a bad idea, as it’s inherently a higher-contrast, material than film. Re-using? I had wondered about that. There’s only one way to find out… With some conventional dev, you can use a replenishment method, whereby you use the dev, throw some away and top up with replenisher. Again, you’d have to try to find out. There’s probably a good weekend’s project in here :)

These are so gorgeous and atmospheric, and I just love your use of coffee developing solution! Inspiring indeedy, and I can’t wait to see some more :)

Further to the comments about re-using the coffee, I went searching last night and found this blog post, that says the coffee/soda mix must be used within 30 minutes. I suppose if you leave it any longer, it’ll go bitter…

... mine’s black, with a pinch of cinnamon – or a dash of whisky, or brandy, or… ;-)

I’ll be making a plunged Global Café Direct fairtrade organic later – it’s a tasty brew. Maybe I’ll start saving the grounds as well, and see if they can be used. It’s a good excuse to drink more of the stuff :-)