Poor Camera!

My husband went out this evening to walk the dogs and came across the camera I put up in the local nature reserve. The poor thing had been pulled down and tossed into a bush, it was incredibly water logged and very soggy indeed, after retrieving the equally soggy photographic paper I decided to scan it anyway to see if it had managed to capture anything. (We have to remember here that it has only been up for about 6 weeks, and who knows when it ended up in the bush!)

Drum roll for the beaten up camera.....

Not too shabby really, it has got the tree line definition and the street light on the right hand side, and lots of water marks. 

More pinhole cameras...

As it was a decent day we decided to go and collect the cameras I had put up a few months ago. Sadly at both locations the cameras had been removed, teaching me the lesson to make sure they are positioned off the beaten track.

With the weather holding and the dogs needing a walk, my Dad and I set out to put up some more. They are positioned in places that are hopefully hidden from view, and in some excellent spots for capturing a great exposure (fingers crossed).

Camera One

Great spot, quite secluded, and again I found myself in shorts wading through nettles and thistles to attach this. One day I will learn to wear trousers.

The view from the camera, fingers crossed for some great sky trails.

Camera Two

Again up to my waist in long grass and nettles, with the ground under foot not quite where I expected it to be!

The view from the camera position.

Hopefully these will stay put and I can pick them up in a few months. Or leave them over the winter as I don't fancy walking around here when it is cold, wet and windy!

Second Round of Pinhole Cameras....

After coming back from holiday we went and picked up the set of cameras put up at my parent's house, these were the second test set to see what would happen over a longer exposure.These cameras were positioned at the front and back of the house at different elevations to see if that would impact on the light exposure.

I am a little disappointed with this image as this camera was at the highest elevation, but it has not produced any light trails in the sky. I don't know if this has anything to do with the direction it was facing or the cloud coverage during the time it was up.

I like the start of the light trail that this photo has captured, I wish that I had now left it up longer, but I might go and replace it and leave it up for 6 months to see if the trails will develop further. I have edited this image and used a purple hue as it picked up the light trails and the detail of the image better.

I have now got 4 cameras still up (fingers crossed they are still there!), and I plan to make some more and get them up over the next few weeks. I think that leaving them for 6 months would make a big difference and also make sure they are facing south and not shaded.

Pinhole Cameras - Experiment Two

After the success of the first camera I decided to take a trip up to the second pinhole camera I had set up and see if it had worked. The first image is the original scan from the photographic paper straight from the camera. I was really excited to see that the image contained the light trail in the sky, which was what I had been hoping for after seeing some examples on other websites.

This is the image after the invert had been applied to the original, and it shows the light trail in the sky even more, and it has highlighted some of the details of the road which was really pleasing.

The next idea I had was to play with the photo editing software to see if I could alter the colours further using the hue and saturation settings, I also played with the brightness and contrast to see what other results I could get out of the image. I am pretty happy with the result, I was surprised with the colours in the sky that appeared, however, I did have to be careful when adding the editing so not to remove the details of the original image.

I am really excited about the results that I have been getting from the pinhole cameras, and these are only after 2 months of being up at the locations. I will be leaving the others out for longer. Fingers crossed they will still be there when I go to collect them! 

The original cameras are now reloaded with new paper and ready to go, along with 3 more that my son and I made earlier today. Just got to find some interesting locations!

Pinhole Cameras Experiment One.....

It has been approximately 8 weeks since I put the first Pinhole Camera up at home as a test run to see if I had got the design right and whether the paper would work with the truly awesome weather we have in the North-West.

After taking down the camera, I realised that I needed to move fairly quickly to ensure that the scan was done swiftly so not to expose the image to much light in the transfer from the camera to the scanner. However, I discovered that getting the paper out of the can in one quick movement was not as easy as I thought it was going to be, and after a few frantic seconds I managed to place it soon the scanner, fingers crossed that I had not damaged the image. Upon placing the paper onto the scanner we realised (husband roped in at this point) that it did not want to scan without a preview first, big no, no when doing this kind of scanning. 

A quick changing of settings into "Professional" mode and we were off, with the scan taking the best part of 5 minutes as we put it on the highest settings to capture a decent image, and yes - the image is massive, 25% and it fills more than the whole of my screen.

Here is the original scan:

We were both impressed with the detail that had been captured by the camera in the short space of time.

Here is the final image, it has been inverted so it gives the illusion that it has been processed, however, this is a much easier method than using all the chemical to actually develop the photograph paper. I am really looking forward to collecting the other cameras that we have put up, and I need to make some more. 

I am really happy with how this experiment has turned out, big smiley face, the adventure with Pinhole Cameras continues.......

Pinhole Cameras

A bit of a change from the usual Raspberry Pi related items, but something that I have become interested in over the last few months. At work the staff were given the opportunity to do the AS Photography course, as I keen photographer (pre-children) I decided it was a great opportunity to get my camera out again.

I have had lots of fun over the year collecting photos of different things and editing them to suit my needs for the AS course. My eldest son (who is 4) and I have had some lovely trips out to different places to take images to use, so much so, he has his own sketch book to keep his photos in.

I have now completed the assessments and work has been moderated so along with keeping my fingers crossed for my students, I am also hoping for a good grade myself. This has given me a bit of time to think about what I might like to do as the next unit to complete the A2 year of the course.

After much Internet searching and thinking about what I would like to try, I have decided to go back to basics and make my own cameras. In my search I cam across this website http://www.pinholephotography.org/

This has some really interesting stuff on it, and I had no idea how easy it would be to make a pinhole camera and set it up. After collecting the required items (the right photo paper being the most difficult to find) and asking my flyball team mates to keep hold of their empties for me to collect I was ready to make the cameras.

So with the video instructions written down and a good idea about how to create the basic camera I began.

Part way through and the lid is made, and all seems to be going well, I am winning the battle against the gaffa tape that wants to stick me to everything else in the house. And the battle with the children who keep running off with different items every time they visit the table to see what is going on. Loading the paper was interesting as I didn't want to expose it to much light, but as it is spending at least 6 month being exposed to the outside world a few seconds to get it in place in the can was not going to cause too much damage.

And here is the finished camera, all ready to roll. I am setting one up at home as my test one with others going up as I make them over the next few weeks. The idea is to catch a long exposure over 6 months with the paper recording the light movement to give some interesting results. It is a fantastic experiment as I have no idea what the images are going to turn out like as the camera is exposed 24/7 for 6 months tracking daylight and night time.

Here are the cameras set up in the test locations, fingers crossed that the one on the bridge does not get removed (I have put a note on it to explain what it is doing). The final challenge of setting up the cameras was to get them attached, I bought some super long cable ties, which were still not long enough unless I doubled them up and used a bit of string to keep it steady!

The idea for the project is to study long exposure photography using my own digital camera and comparing the results from the pinhole camera, using the same locations where possible. Fingers crossed....