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Writer's pictureKatie Rose

First OM-1 body cap test.

I finally got some images developed from my test run of my body cap lens. As this was primarily a test I decided not to go far afield and just stick to very local spots around Aber. I used Ilford's HP5+ film as it is one of my favourite films for landscapes, and it being a 400ISO it means I can shoot in lower light conditions than that of slower films, something that is even more important when using apertures as small as the ones needed for pinhole photography.


I first started along the prom, going north toward the Ceredigion Costal Path (a personal favourite walk of mine), and then finished off at the castle grounds near South Beach before heading home. The weather was average for this time of year, a little spittle of rain and some clouds but the sun could be seen at times to break through the clouds and highlight parts of the sea.



This first image was taken on the initial walk up Constitution Hill. It is of a foot bridge over the vernacular tracks that run to the top from the bottom. Overall, I quite like the composition of the image however I feel it, as well as many others from this roll, could benefit from a contrast filter when printed in the dark room. As is, all these images have been scanned in from the negatives and no editing has been done except small uses of a spot healing brush to remove any dust left over after wiping the negs and the scanner.



These three images were all taken from the same spot, but at different shutter speeds. I had calculated the f-stop of this particular pinhole to be roughly 42, to do this I divided the focal length (distance from film plane to aperture), 42mm, by the size of the pin hole, roughly 1mm. For the first images, the shutter speed was 1/4s, the second 1/2s, and the third was 1s. A tripod was used for each shot, but no cable released was used due to the relatively quick (for pinhole) shutter speeds. I was using an exposure convertor wheel I had found online (found here http://www.rahji.com/pdf/irmer.pdf ) but still wanted to test out a variety of different exposure times due to this being a first test of the lens.



This shot was taken primarily because I wanted to see how well the pinhole lens could capture the light rays seen as a gap in the clouds passed in front of the sun. To the naked eye distinct rays of light could be seen emerging from the clouds and striking the top of the water, this is what the bright oval of light is on the horizon at the bottom of the image. I metered for the light which is why the foreground is so dark. Instead of these distinct rays I saw, they have merged with the highlights on the water to form one mass of bright white in the image. I feel that metering for the light has made this shot incredibly interesting, as it shows the sun in the clouds so intensely, but due to it being a pinhole the edges and definition of this as well as the other aspects of the image are very soft, making the whole image rather ethereal which was one of the driving intentions behind using a pinhole lens in the first place. Again however, this lack of contrast mentioned earlier can be seen in the separation from sea to sky, without the oval of sunlight on the horizon it would be near impossible to distinguish between the two.



The biggest problem I found with the pinhole lens was not the calculating of exposure times, as I had used mathematic formulas to calculate the f-stop of my lens and from there all it took was a light meter and exposure converter, but the framing of the subject. Due to the very small amount of light coming in through the lens, the image seen in the view finder is incredibly dark itself and took a bit of a strain on my eyes to see clearly. For the most part it just resulted in slightly surprising shots where I thought the framing was only a little different to what it actually was, but in the case of the image above it was wildly different to what I had expected to see. I think a factor that contributed to this particular shot being so far off the mark compared to others was the height of my tripod, it was incredibly low to the ground so the angle of my eye looking into the view finder was not ideal. This is something I will have to take into account when going on further shoots so that I can attain the exact shots I want first time.



Whilst I don't think any of the images from this roll are particularly "wow" worthy, they have helped me consider issues surrounding pinhole photography that hadn't occurred to me before, as well as helping me decided where I wanted to take the project from this point onward. I felt that the images I did get from this roll that were the most successful were the ones that included rocks or stone, such as the ones from the castle grounds or of the walls and paths running up Constitution Hill. The parts that draw me to these materials, I believe, is the deeper range of grey tones they have produced. The amount of depth in each image, drawing the viewer inwards to the shot. With the images that included nothing more than foliage, so much of the detail was lost due to the nature of the pinhole, but with the stone-based images this detail was still there, just much softer and more abstract in shape. Which is exactly what I was looking for when deciding to do pinhole photography.


As a test roll, I have learnt a lot more than I ever expected to learn from it, not only in the operation of the pinhole lens and how 35mm film reacts to it, but the direction of my project as well. From here I will be looking into areas in and around Aber that will allow me to capture subjects including these types of material before moving further afield. I'm looking forward to seeing where this takes me.

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