Kitcatt Nohr Digitas

IMAGE: pinhole.jpg

At the end of last year, I found an absolute bargain on eBay.

Until fairly recently, it was Canon's top of the range 35mm film camera: the EOS1n. Its digital equivalent today would set you back over £5000. Because of the laws of supply and demand, it was mine for £240. It's beautiful, built like a tank (and, to be fair, almost as heavy), and it makes that fantastic kerrrcshinkk! noise as the shutter flies across the back at up to 8000th of a second. That's  still faster than my EOS5D mk11 can manage. In mint condition, I reckon it's the bargain of the century. 

But that's not what's got me all excited.

My son and I have nearly completed a mindbogglingly difficult to construct printed and die-cut cardboard pinhole camera, which also takes 35mm film, and the fundamentals of the design are as simple as the very first cameras constructed over 150 years ago.

There's a copper plate with a tiny pinprick of a hole punched in it, a means of holding light sensitive film a set distance away from it, and a crude shutter (actually a piece of card which you lift up for between 2 and 10 seconds, depending on how bright it is).

It seems the more advances are made in the digital camera field, the more I am drawn to the very early pioneers of photography. Back then it was considered both an art form and a scientific breakthrough, as making a photographic image had as much to do with chemistry as it had to do with art. 

Look at them now, some of those very early calotypes, daguerrotypes and cyanotypes; to me some have never been surpassed. 

I can't wait to cause some light to fall on a roll of emulsion containing silver halide salts.

Anybody want a portrait taking?