October 25, 2013

Yeah, That worked :/

Sorry for the lack of updates, I made up the pinhole ages ago, before I finished for the summer holidays (I’m a teacher), then I left it at work (I’m a forgetful teacher), so it wasn’t until I went back in September that I had a chance to give it a go, and then work kept getting in the way, so it wasn’t until the start of October I managed to try it out, and then again I couldn’t find the time to write it up.

Anyway, I managed to try a test exposure, outside; I calculated the exposure to be around 2 minutes as it was fairly cloudy. I placed the pinhole on its stand on a bench, found something vaguely interesting (a tricky thing to do at work) and opened up the hole.

First Attempt

Back in the darkroom, I got all the bits together, made up some fresh developer, stop and fix and set to work. 2 mins in the dev, 30 seconds stop bath, and I gave it a good 5 minutes in the fix as I didn’t know how thick the emulsion would be inside and I didn’t want to have areas that were unfixed. I washed it for a good 5 minutes as well; to make sure it was nice and chemical free.

The chemicals ready to go – lights out!

It looked like it had worked form the outside as where I had spilt the liquid light (I’m a clumsy, forgetful teacher) it had turned black.

Adding Chemicals and a good wash

I fetched a hammer from the workshop and started to gently tap away around the opening.

Hammer Time!

Tapping didn’t work so I gave it a good ‘whack’ – that worked – and a big chunk fell off. I had a quick look inside – it looked pretty black in there – I smashed out a bit more – yep, definitely black inside, no sign of a cool negative image curved around the inside.

‘sad face’

Well, so much for attempt one!

I’m not one to give up, the possible reasons why it didn’t work could be: (If anyone has any other suggestions please feel free to comment)

Contaminated Liquid Light – Light had somehow managed to expose my emulsion before it made it into the camera
Liquid Light out of date (it wasn’t – I checked)
I’d left it too long before using it – I can try another one to find this out, but use it straight away
Light had leaked into the camera from holes in the shell I didn’t notice
Light had got through the thin ceramic shell – I think this is the most likely reason, the 2-minute exposure time might have been enough to let light shine through the clay, I’ll make some thicker walled ones next time and try again.

Now I’m back at work, I’ll be able to do these more speedily, so there won’t be such a gap in updates.

So – onwards then – the adventure isn’t over yet…