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Pinhole paper negative and me at the studio with the "Talbot's Horse" © Flavio Martín Morante_2014
Nikon P7000
Back on 2010 as I was coming back to the States from Uruguay, the in-flight channel did have on the listing a documentary titled "It Might Get Loud" featuring guitar players Jack White (White Stripes), The Edge (U2) and Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin) and their relationship with their craft and instruments. If you have seen the documentary you will understand what I will mention here but if you have not, watch the clip below and you will understand what this post is about.
At the intro of the movie, you see Jack White on some rural front porch making a guitar right there; come on, watch the clip.
Anyway, if you saw it you may understand why I have to say that those couple of minutes still play loud on my head like they did back then thousands of feet above the earth. Seeing the man making that guitar made me feel admiration for it as I did for my Dad when I saw him building a weed eater using the engine of a blender but also made me think big time on my love for photography and today after 4 years of self learning everything I have been able to learn, I finally have my "Jack White moment" on the back of our house, when I finished building and took a picture with "Talbot's Horse", the camera I designed and built by myself. (First photo taken yesterday and "self-portrait"at the beginning of this post).
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Digital capture of the tree on the back of our house © Flavio Martín Morante_2014
Nikon P7000
I have to say that I am really happy since this means a lot, not only to have put myself to study a lot in order to get to this point understanding light above all but also to be able to share it today here. Somehow this is my "self graduation present" I am aware is just a pinhole camera but after a month designing it, making all the mathematical equations, finally putting it together and obtaining a half decent image with a 10 year old sheet of paper accidentally exposed and fogged, I cannot deny myself some satisfaction.
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Front/side and rear cover view of my homemade "Talbot's Horse" © Flavio Martín Morante_2014
Nikon P7000
I decided to name it "Talbot's Horse" in honor to Henry Fox Talbot and Horse because this thing is big. Made in order to be used with a film holder format of 8x10 inches, this is the biggest camera I have worked so far. Originally I thought to make it 11x14 but I wanted to be able to scan the negatives and the positive prints, so I reduced the size to a more standard fitting. On the below photograph, it can be seen a comparison between the film holder of this camera and the 4 x 5 film holder in which I started my own study of large format photography back in 2012.
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Camera's rear with 8 x 10 film holder and 4 x 5 film holder on top to establish size comparison
© Flavio Martín Morante_2014 _Nikon P7000.
The camera has an only aperture of f416 and a normal focal length measuring 13 inches from the plate to the pinhole. I ended up making a shutter using a floppy disk, yes a floppy disk which opens and closes by the action of a release cable and the spring from the disk (see photo below).
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"Floppy disk" shutter's view closed (left) and open (right)
© Flavio Martín Morante_2014 _Nikon P7000.
For the first photograph I used something you may ask why someone will use that kind of ruined paper as it was this Kodak PolyFiber I have which has been exposed (see the white corners on the photograph), it is fogged and also around a decade old?. The reason for using it was first that I am waiting for a shipment of Arista EDU Grade 2 that I will be using for the paper negatives and the Ilford Multigrade Warmtone RC for the positives I will be making for the project I will be working on (and for which I built the camera) but also because I wanted to see how much of an image I will get on a piece of paper from which I knew all the cons I was confronting. The result is not a museum image, but to me meant that there is a long way ahead and I hope to share some successful steps on this path.
Will be back soon with more details as I go. (Hopefully the paper gets here soon and the weather improves in order to be outside without feeling miserable).
Cheers!
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