First attempt at solargraphy

pyry · January 18, 2009

The idea of leaving a piece of photo print paper in a pinhole for long enough to not have to deal with any chemicals kind of appealed to me

My first attempt, a pineapple can with Ilford multigrade BW paper, mounted to the top of the High voltage building on the HUT campus. This is 18 days worth of light. I have another can at the same location, going to let that one go out to 5 weeks or so.

Lessons learned:
Duct tape works even surprisingly well.
Less double sided tape to mount the paper next time. A lot less.
Paint the inside of the cans black.

And put some more cans out

Robinivich · January 18, 2009

That's 18 days exposure?!?!

I guess that explains why there are several different arcs from the sun, you've successfully captured motion blur from the earth moving through it's orbit!

I do see where a "shotgun" approach WRT numbers of cans would help!

pyry · January 18, 2009

Robinivich wrote:

That's 18 days exposure?!?!

I guess that explains why there are several different arcs from the sun, you've successfully captured motion blur from the earth moving through it's orbit!

I do see where a "shotgun" approach WRT numbers of cans would help!

Thanks for your comment

Yup, 18 days. Which is a puny little while in this sport

I took the first can down early because I wanted to see what I was doing wrong before trying the really long projects.

These exposures can go on for months (take a look at this).

"Motion blur of the earth moving through it's orbit", sounds really cool

eL eSs Vee · January 18, 2009

I've never seen this done before. Knowing the properties of photo paper, I would've thought the image would be negative and in black and white. And how long will the image last?

I find this very interesting.

pyry · January 18, 2009

eL eSs Vee wrote:

I've never seen this done before. Knowing the properties of photo paper, I would've thought the image would be negative and in black and white. And how long will the image last?

I find this very interesting.

It is negative, the image you see up there has been inverted and had a good boost of contrast. Without any developers the sun burns a black streak, everything else goes into a pale brown, hence the colour.

And it won't last very long. You can stick the paper into a scanner or take a picture of it, but the paper is still active, you can't hang it onto a wall as it is. I haven't actually worked with film before at all really, so I don't know if it's possible to stop the paper from exposing more without developing it (at all or much anyway). I'm pretty sure the paper would go black just from showing it a developer bottle from the doorway.

pyry · February 10, 2009

Second can from my first test pair, this exposure is 42 days, or 6 weeks.

tsk1979 · February 10, 2009

i think you caught the moon too!

Art Scott · February 10, 2009

pyry wrote:

And it won't last very long. You can stick the paper into a scanner or take a picture of it, but the paper is still active, you can't hang it onto a wall as it is. I haven't actually worked with film before at all really, so I don't know if it's possible to stop the paper from exposing more without developing it (at all or much anyway). I'm pretty sure the paper would go black just from showing it a developer bottle from the doorway.

cool shot!!!

Yes you can STOP IT.....camera store should have a bottle of acetic acid....it is pee yellow and will rip your nasal passage right out of your head if you stick your nose into a pure bottle of it.....I do not remember the dilution but can be found on the net.......stop bath and then water wash.....or water wash for around 30 minutes.....depending on paper.....I was cheap when it came to my blk/wht processes so I used the stop bath.....a pint bottle lasted me over 5yrs and I did a lot of playing in the darkroom..............so I would recommend stopping it and a water wash to remove stop bath (the stop bath will stain things yellow) and letting it dry then scanning........that way scan will not affect the contrast of the photo.
Also try different contrasts of paper.....pin hole shooting is quite fun.

do you ahve any idea of your aperture size????

pyry · February 10, 2009

tsk1979 wrote:

i think you caught the moon too!

Thanks, but I don't think I did

Art Scott wrote:

cool shot!!!

Yes you can STOP IT.....camera store should have a bottle of acetic acid....it is pee yellow and will rip your nasal passage right out of your head if you stick your nose into a pure bottle of it.....I do not remember the dilution but can be found on the net.......stop bath and then water wash.....or water wash for around 30 minutes.....depending on paper.....I was cheap when it came to my blk/wht processes so I used the stop bath.....a pint bottle lasted me over 5yrs and I did a lot of playing in the darkroom..............so I would recommend stopping it and a water wash to remove stop bath (the stop bath will stain things yellow) and letting it dry then scanning........that way scan will not affect the contrast of the photo.
Also try different contrasts of paper.....pin hole shooting is quite fun.

do you ahve any idea of your aperture size????

Thanks a million for that Art! I put those papers in a dark cabinet waiting for that info

I used Ilford multigrade paper, which seems to have done a reasonable job.

Aperture in these cans was around f/100.

First attempt at solargraphy

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