Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day - 27 April 2025.

For 2025 was another we used the 8x10 Pinhole Camera, with a 0.020 inches (0.51 mm) pinhole for an aperture of f/300.

The weather was excellent. Ye Olde Photographer used the Pinhole Assist app on his iPhone 13 Pro to determine exposure. Of course there is always something! YoP drove the better part of an hour to the eastern end of the Allentown & Auburn Railroad just outside of Topton where it has some buildings and various rolling stock and diesel engines. YoP hoped to get some views along the track to take advantage of the super depth of field from the pinhole. Alas, the general view wasn't too inspiring, but there were some nice farms on the other side of the road. When YoP went to set up his camera on a tripod he discovered he failed to bring a quick relase plate to couple them(!) So-o-o with the tailgate up he sat in the cargo area and tried holding the camera down on the floor with the pinhole end pointing out the back and across the road. It didn't seem rock solid, although the resulting exposure wasn't too bad.

Given the overall disappointment, a decision was made to go back home and get the QR plates. YoP then drove up to a township owned historic site, the Heckler Farmstead, where he tried to take advantage of the long shadows of late afternoon. In some previous years we visited this site, but taking advantage of the late day lighting was a new approach.

In all, five shots were taken on Fuji HR-T X-ray film developed 3:00 in HC-110 1+63. One shot was up in Topton, with the remaining four at the farmstead. Later the negatives were contact printed on 8x10 Ilford Multigrade RC with a pearl surface. The results were judged quite satisfactory for the most part. An enlarger, a venerable Omega B-8, is just used as a light source. The prints were made with a #2 or #2-1/2 contrast filter for the multi-grade paper. The resulting prints were scanned on a Canon MG6300 flatbed using VueScan and minimal adjustments.

The official WPPD submission should appear at this link.