Film, Reprocity and Pinholes

Let’s get straight to the point. What’s the best film for a pinhole camera? The answer is of course, that old classic “...it depends...” In the past, I’ve used the cheapest 5x4 medium speed black & white film I could get my hands on. It worked fine. I never used colour, the cost of developing colour sheet film is just too high. But now I can shoot roll film, there's a whole lot more choice. Including colour neg and colour slide.What should I use?

The issue that always crops up with pinhole photography is reciprocity failure. As exposure times go longer than about 1 second, you need to add more and more exposure time. Your meter tells you you need 5 seconds, but you’ll need to give it 30 sconds. Or the meter suggests 5 minutes and you’ll need 2 hours or maybe 5. It's hard to tell. With colour it can be worse as the colour balance of the film starts changing with longer exposures. It’s all a little imprecise. Trial and error becomes the standard technique.

So with a new pinhole camera to play with, I thought I’d visit the film manufacturers websites and see who advertises the best reciprocity characteristics. From their published data I've worked out a basic exposure guide for a few popular films for my f250 camera:
The yellow shaded areas are where reciprocity correction has needed to be applied. The deeper you go into the yellow, the more unpredictable the result. The grey area is beyond Ilford's published data. It's important to note that I've done no testing here, this is just from manufacturers data. Out in the real world, actual exposures might need to be completely different. You need to do your own testing.

And the winner? With no correction needed all the way down to LV8 it has to be Provia 400x. The 6x9 colour transparencies are going to look amazing! In black & white it's between Delta 3200 and TMax 400. I'm tempted to say Tmax as Delta at 3200 is already a push process. It's a just a shame Kodak don't do TMax 3200 in 120 format. That might work really well in a pinhole. Anyway, I'll be stocking up just as soon as I've made sure the camera actually works!

'Guexposing' Cheap Film

A while ago, a relative handed me two 'free' Truprint films that they weren't ever going to use. Truprint is one of those consumer labs that give you a free film each time you send one in. They, the relies, had found some exposed films in a drawer and sent them in for processing and, well, I got the free film. Two rolls. The film is probably Ferrania Solaris 200, which I wouldn't usually use, but hey, it's free, so I might as well give it a go. Roll one went in my Olympus 35RC. The results, processed and scanned by Peak, were, well, dull. Dull, cold colours, not very sharp. Just what I expected really.

Cothele. Olympus 35RC / Truprint 200 film

So, what to do with the second roll? Putting it in the bin seemed a good idea, but not much fun. I wanted a challenge, so the Truprint film went in the Pentax MX and the camera's batteries came out. I'm shooting it meterless, so to speak. I mean, how much of this matrix metering technology do we really need anyway? Doesn't print film have a really wide latitude? Let's see if this sunny 16 rule actually works. So now I've finished the film, but don't really want to pay Peak's prices for something that, lets face it, isn't going to come out to well. I'd picked up a Truprint mail-in envelope from a motorway service station a couple of weeks back and thought that if it's their film, they should be able to get the best from it. Trouble is, if they process it, they'll send me another film... but I ticked the little box to upgrade my film to Kodak. Wooo hooo! Kodak ColorPlus 200 what ever that is. I've never see that anywhere else... I'm eagerly awaiting the prints back from the lab.