Rusty shutters #36.

Pinholaroid.

September 2008.

Modified Polaroid Colorpack II – 35mm @ ƒ/140. No batteries required!

After removing the lens and shutter, I lopped off a good portion the front, then fitted a neatly cut and trimmed piece of black ABS to cover the resulting hole. This made for a shorter distance to the film plane and a wide angle of view.

I measured for center, then drilled a 4/16″ hole through the front plate. The shutter and shutter-stops came next. I measured for the shutter location, drilled a pilot hole, then attached the shutter with a small brass screw, washer and nut. The stops were super-glued. Super-simple operation.

I cut a 3/4″ square piece of soda can and used a very small sewing needle and a sheet of binder paper folded up a bit and placed beneath it to punch the hole through the aluminum, slowly, sanding the back of the puncture to smooth it out. The pinhole is attached to the inside of the camera with gaffer tape.

I turned the camera upside down and added a viewfinder, using a simple 200 degree peep-hole from Home Depot. I used ABS for the viewfinder support, drilled a hole to accommodate the peep-hole and super-glued the bracket to the camera body. The viewfinder placement is dead center above the pinhole.

Having removed the original Colorpack II viewfinder – which is now on the bottom of the camera – I cut out 6 of pieces of ABS that mimicked the shape of the Manfrotto tripod mount I use, each slightly smaller than the next. I glued them together, then drilled a hole for a 1/4-20 sleeve to attach the Manfrotto mount.

In a stroke of good luck, the pattern on the ABS was a close match to that of the Colorpack II. I finished off the Pinholaroid by painting all the exposed ABS satin black.

A fun little project. I even have a decent stash of Fuji pack-film to use with this camera.

San Jose City Hall

Patriotism

Picture Day

White iron

Me

It’s not cheating, is it?

A $40 experiment.

One of my fave shots from Spring 2020 ‘Roid Week was taken with a Pentax Q10 mirrorless camera and using the Polaroid Lab, printed on Polaroid I-Type instant black and white film.

I noticed a more than a few peeps doing something similar. Very interesting work and great results.

I spotted some black-frame Instax Square film on Amazon. $10 for a box of ten shots – I bought four boxes.

I’ll be taking square black and white shots with my LX100, load them onto the SQ10s miniSD card and print them out in monochrome.

That’ll give me 40 shots to edit down to 12 through between now and the Fall.

Necessity…

… is the mother of invention.

I got out with my new-ish ONDU 6×12 Multiformat pinhole camera a coupla’ weeks back for FP4 Plus Party.

Multiformat means it’ll shoot 6×6, 6×9, or 6×12.

I have a really cool 8Banners Mc pinhole that’s set to shoot square, a shiny Zero Image 6×9, so the ONDU will be dedicated to 6×12.

As previously noted, I shot 6 images with the ONDU. Of the 6, 3 had my fat fingers showing in the right side of the frame. Those shots were roughly 1 second exposures. Super-sunny days. There are lines in the top of the camera that tell you what’ll be in view for each, and my fingers fell into that space.

I’ve come up with a nifty way to get my digits out of the picture.

I used Illustrator to draw up a simple extender. Then I used a low-tack spray adhesive to affix the drawing to a piece of repurposed plastic from my 2019 Office Max calendar cover. I keep everything. The perfect-sized hole was made using simple hole punch. I sanded the edges and tied a piece of ribbon in the hole at the other end.

The rubber band was already in place – it keeps the shutter from opening while the box is in my camera case. Now it can hold the extender in place and serve as tension when using the extender. Easy to put on, take off.

Simple. Used stuff I had. Great solution. Free.

I started posting shots for the FP4 Plus Party on Twitter today.