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For the uninitiated, a pinhole camera is a camera that has nothing more than a very small hole in a thin piece of metal acting as a lens. It has no viewfinder so composition is done by estimation. There are no shutter speeds and no mechanical shutter. To expose the film you slide a cover from over the pinhole and use a watch to time the exposure. When done, you slide the cover back over the pinhole. My exposures run from 1 second to many minutes, even hours.


Though I do make my own 4x5 and 8x10 pinhole cameras the one I use almost exclusively is the Zero Image 6x6 roll film camera. It's just more convenient than the larger cameras. I have two tri-pods for the pinhole camera. One is a mini that goes from about 8" or so to about 18". The other picks up at around 18" and will extend to about 5'. I use Ilford's FP-4 film rated at E.I. 80 and process the film with TD-16 diluted 2:1 in a Jobo processor. After processing I scan the film using a Nikon Coolscan 9000. "Traditional" darkroom adjustments are made in Photoshop prior to printing. For printing I use an Epson 1280 charged with Jon Cone's neutral K6 inks. At present my paper of choice is Hahnemuhle's Photo Rag paper. These products are rated "archival".

With the Jobo I have tried various developers including pyro but found that for my methods TD-16 is the best. TD-16 is the Photographers' Formulary version of D-76 but they have managed to tame the PH issues. However when processing by hand in an inversion tank I like the Photographer's Formulary Pyro developers. They do a good job of holding highlights.