Sharpness Be Damned! My First 8x10 Pinhole Experience
Rebooting and running weekly content on the YouTube channel has really opened me up to trying new things. In a decade of working in large format, I hadn’t considered what trying pinhole photography would be like. This past week, I had the opportunity to use an 8x10 pinhole and I was pleasantly surprised with the results. The full video going through the process and my shooting in the field is embedded below, and if you’d like to see some higher res versions of some of my results, click one of the thumbnails at the top of this post or head over to my Flickr album here.
For a little more background story, the cameras were handmade by Mr. Bob Grachien. I know very little of Bob, except that he was meticulous in his pinhole work. These cameras have more features than some of my view cameras, and were a joy to use. The craftsmanship on the 8x10 was fantastic, and definitely built to withstand the punishingly long exposures needed for pinhole photography.
Working with a fixed field of view and a whopping f/264 aperture can feel very limiting, but the lack of other things to worry about it quite relaxing! No loupes, darkcloth, movements/Scheimpflug, just level the camera and make an exposure. I can definitely see why folks have been asking me to try this for a long time. While I still have access to these cool cameras, I’m going to experiment with a few more types of film and paper. As I get results, they’ll end up on the Flickr stream.