Product Description
Pinhole Camera Color Nude Photographs This album of bodyscapes was made with two pinhole cameras. Both of the cameras are commercially available for about $50 each. One is the Pinhole Blender Mini 120 and the other is the Holga 120WPC. The Pinhole Blender curves the film and multiple images can be overlapped and blended with feathered edges. The Holga is a wide-angle camera, producing 6x9cm and 6x12cm rectilinear images. The lighting I used was a single PowerLight 1500SL. This powerful flash unit had to be used at full output to correctly expose 400 ISO film because of the small apertures of the cameras (f/133 for the Holga and f/200 for the Blender). The photos were made using Kodak Portra 400NC 120 film. The Holga was sometimes tripod-mounted and both were usually hand-held. Focus and depth of field are no problem with pinhole cameras which permitted me to position the cameras very close to the models. The models in this album are all volunteers from Tucson, Arizona. Most are professional models. Their gifts of time and their patient cooperation with my direction for this project are very greatly appreciated. I bought the pinhole cameras as toys, really, but I was fascinated with the results they gave me. I decided to devote a project to the pinholes, hence this book. They are challenging cameras to use because I have to imagine the photos; there are no viewfinders, and blending images is somewhat unpredictable. There are no lenses and therefore no color correction so colors come out -interesting,- (although I manipulated colors on some photos) and the soft focus effect is just right for bodyscape photos. The large film size minimizes grain, producing a clear, smooth texture except when certain images needed substantial cropping. I developed my style for bodyscapes some 30 years ago, using students from the University of Illinois as models. Finding my own vision for bodyscape photos was a four-year endeavor. Since that time I have wanted to redo this project. I had to wait for my life circumstances to finally resolve in a way that permitted me to tackle the project again.

I wouldn-t have predicted that I would redo the project with toy cameras, but the pinhole cameras enable me to produce photos that are not possible with conventional cameras. Pinhole cameras were the very first cameras but, you know, they make me feel like a pioneer. --George Arthur Lareau, Tucson photographic artist Photo Gallery: http://photog.sufigeorge.net Print Ordering Info: prints@sufigeorge.net Sufi George Books: http://sgbooks.sufigeorge.net ... Read more

Product Description
How-To-Guide on constructing and using a large 8x10corrugated pinhole camera. It instructs you on how to make threedifferent cameras: wide-angle, normal and telephoto. Included in thebooklet are six ( lenses ) 1.5-in. sq. sheets of .002 brassshims. Three shims have individual precision hand-drilled pinholes indifferent diameters the extra blank shims are included for the buyerto make their own pinholes; explained in STEP 9 How-to-make apinhole. The How-To-Guide includes: Historical notes, Technical facts,where to buy 8x10 film and how to make a 12-inch square platform for atripod stand. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Geat book
Great book with the provided pinholes so you don't have to make them yourself. A good value to get you started with pinhole photography.

Lanny R. North
Excellent little book.Although I handicrafted the cameras I use out of wood, the three cameras outlined in the book are excellently constructed and what is more offer interchangeable parts that make it easy to use a variety of pinholes. The pinholes that come with the book are themselves worth the price of the book.I found that the pinhole construction was one of the variables that is the most difficult to realize. Needle sizes are, it seems, no longer numbered by the old method. A #10 needle size is hard to nail down.Measurements on that fine a scale almost as difficult.The technics of achieving a smooth ly rounded hole are not often elaborated. So for a true beginner, the cameras, the provided pinholes and the details given in the text combine to make the time between book purchase and great photographic results joyfully short.

Wonderful Booklet
I really enjoyed this pinhole booklet and making my pinhole camera. It gave me all the information I needed on how to build and use 8x10 corrugated pinhole cameras. Also enclosed in the booklet are three hand-drilled brass lenses for your pinhole cameras and three brass blank shims with instructions to make your own pinhole lenses.

Quite disappointed
The pamphlet itself was disappointing, only redeeming factor was the the included pinholes. Really feel that this is overpriced for the information received.

Good BOOKLET--this is not a book!
This book is a nice little booklet on how to make a pinhole camera--it even includes six lenses!But it is a bookLET.It is made of cardstock-like paper and is about 16 pages long.It won't matter, I assume, to some--I just wanted all to know what they were paying $15 for.(I was expecting a book.)But again--it does have good information in it.I'm using it to help teach a photography class in a high school. ... Read more

Product Description
The Pinhole Camera is a practical how-to manual for making pinhole cameras and images.The techniques contained here are not difficult to master, and soon you will find yourself constructing your own cameras and making wonderful, innovative images. The content is divided into four parts, spanning fourteen comprehensive chapters.The Beginner Track, Advanced Track, and Creative Opportunities serve as an intuitive structure to the topics and techniques introduced so that both beginners and advanced artists can work at their own pace. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Great Book
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in trying something new for photography.Great book!

Best place to start reading about Pinhole Cameras
This book is a great place to start if you're interested in Pinhole Photography. The author writes enthusiastically and unpretentiously about the subject and his energy and commitment comes across in abundance. I'm a Pinhole Photographer myself and this book has really rejuvenated my interest in making my own cameras.

Practical
An excellent book with plenty of how-to instructions along with interesting histories, examples, photographs, resources, internet addresses, etc. Highly recommended. ... Read more

Product Description

This book traces progress in photography since the first pinhole, or camera obscura, architecture. The authors describe innovations such as photogrammetry, and omnidirectional vision for robotic navigation. The text shows how new camera architectures create a need to master related projective geometries for calibration, binocular stereo, static or dynamic scene understanding. Written by leading researchers in the field, this book also explores applications of alternative camera architectures.

Product Description
Abelardo Morell’s magical camera obscura images blur the boundaries between interior and exterior worlds. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Inspiring
Abe was my first photography professor at massachusetts college of art, he's an amazing photographer and an amazing and inspiring teacher. Pick this book up and get inspired too!

Sublime and Intriguing
Photography is a fascinating art form. What is more fascinating is when a photographer transcends the photo to create artistic imagery that invites on in to spend time viewing the image. Abelardo Morell does just this. The quality of the writing and the paper just add to the overall experience. A book worthy of a special spot on the shelf or, even better, on the coffee table so many can share in the beauty.

Wow again!
Picked up Morell's newest at the Brookline Booksmith book signing the other night, where the artist gave an inspiring talk. Going back for more copies tonight.This is the single best homage to photography ever!Where does a person get such fantastic ideas and how does he realize them with such beauty and wonder?Last year, one could hardly imagine how Morell might follow up his equally elegant Book of Books.Well, now we know. ... Read more

Product Description
The stunningand dramatic beauty of California's Central Coast has long been a magnet for artists and photographers, and is emblematic of the school of West Coast photography. Home to photographers Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and Wynn Bullock, the Central Coast remains a mecca for photographers. In this collection, Martha Casanave has taken a conceptual and imaginative, rather than a literal approach to this iconic location.Martha Casanave: Explorations Along an Imaginary Coastlinecaptures scenes of this striking coastline from a new perspective. Equipped with only a 6 x 4 pinhole camera, Casanave transforms the recognisable into the other-worldly and brings a timeless elegance and drama to her photography never before published. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A pick for any college-level art collection strong in landscape works.
Martha Casanave had always been an indoor photographer before this book, living on the central California coast among landscape photographer friends and colleagues. She shot indoor portraits of friends and people - until six years ago she was invited to take her camera to the ocean, beginning a long-term love affair with the coastline, here reflected in a series of black and white photos. The full-page black and white studies capture artistic elements of the coastline and are a pick for any college-level art collection strong in landscape works.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch ... Read more

Product Description
Ocean Pinholes features a selection of photographs taken using both large-format and digital pinhole cameras . Ocean is the subject matter of this book. ... Read more

Product Description
La vida brinca--life jumps--and yet we strive to capture its passing moments by creating images. One of the simplest yet most evocative techniques for image-making is pinhole photography. Using a tiny aperture without a lens to shine light on a piece of film, pinhole cameras accumulate light until an image forms. Bill Wittliff calls the cameras he makes tragaluces, "light swallowers." By controlling only the size of the aperture, the distance to the film, and the length of the exposure, he makes images that forsake the documentary realism of traditional photography to disclose instead the presence of the mystical in the everyday world. The tragaluz photographs in La Vida Brinca record iconic images of Hispanic life. Wittliff photographed fiestas, religious observances, street scenes, people's faces, and enduring rural landscapes. But with the soft focus and surprise elements that typify his tragaluz photographs, these images become dreamlike--scenes from a world where, as Stephen Harrigan says, "reassuring touchstones are likely to dissolve, and where the unseen is always startlingly on view." The accompanying essays by Harrigan and Elizabeth Ferrer discuss the history and techniques of pinhole photography, as well as Bill Wittliff's artistic choice to work in this medium. As a work of art, La Vida Brinca reveals that pinhole photography is an ideal vehicle for finding profound meaning in the commonplace, for seeing beyond what the eye can see. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The Language of Light
Bill Wittliff is a man of many talents: he is a screenwriter and producer of such films as 'Lonesome Dove', 'Legends of the Fall', 'The Perfect Storm', etc as well as a photographer and writer whose works have mad the rounds of museums both in the United States and abroad. The broad scope of his communication with the visual image adds a degree of fascination in his latest portfolio of photographs, LA VA BRINCA, and among the reasons is the manner in which he elected to capture these images.

For this collection of Hispanic imagery of the simple life in Mexico balances with his exploration of the rituals and festivals of the people whose faces and personalities he captures.Using a pinhole or 'tragaluces' camera (a simple box with a single hole that absorbs light from an object in accordance with the amount of time of the exposure, the distance form the object, and the artist's wishes - 'tragaluces' is translated as "light swallower"), Wittliff enhances his interesting images with the distortions this technique allows.The results are central statements in focus that seemingly float in a gradually blurring atmosphere. Or, in other words, the final images are more mystical or magical, a characteristic that enhances his choice of subject matter.

Another aspect that makes this particular portfolio exceptional is the design of the layout of the book.Each full-page image is balanced by a blank page facing it.The resultant space given each photograph invites the viewer to concentrate on the mystery of the image, encouraging apersonal interpretation by the viewer to participate in the at times bizarre imagery. Stephen Harrigan and Elizabeth Ferrer provide essays that explain the history and use of the pinhole camera as well as the particular position of the artist Bill Wittliff in this field of creativity.It is a fine volume that goes beyond the usual portfolio of collected photographs.Grady Harp, March 08 ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Publisher summary...
From pinhole to print will guide you from drilling your first pinhole to printing your first pinhole photograph. It is an easy to read, step-by-step guide to making a pinhole camera and creating images. Today - when most cameras are brimming with digital functionality - many seek relief in the simplicity of a basic pinhole camera. Pinholing is a very pure form of photography. The pinhole camera that you will build is simple, but pinholing has few limitations. Pinholing is a fantastic way to discover photography. Building the camera, loading the paper and taking a first picture gives the beginner an understanding of the basic skills used in photography. The artists' gallery will inspire you to take your pinholing further. Once you get started you may even become a dedicated pinhead! ... Read more

Product Description
Art historians have long speculated on how Vermeer achieved the uncanny mixture of detached precision, compositional repose, and perspective accuracy that have drawn many to describe his work as "photographic."Indeed, many wonder if Vermeer employed a camera obscura, a primitive form of camera, to enhance his realistic effects? In Vermeer's Camera, Philip Steadman traces the development of the camera obscura--first described by Leonaro da Vinci--weighs the arguments that scholars have made for and against Vermeer's use of the camera, and offers a fascinating examination of the paintings themselves and what they alone can tell us of Vermeer's technique. Vermeer left no record of his method and indeed we know almost nothing of the man nor of how he worked. But by a close and illuminating study of the paintings Steadman concludes that Vermeer did use the camera obscura and shows how the inherent defects in this primitive device enabled Vermeer to achieve some remarkable effects--the slight blurring of image, the absence of sharp lines, the peculiar illusion not of closeness but of distance in the domestic scenes. Steadman argues that the use of the camera also explains some previously unexplainable qualities of Vermeer's art, such as the absence of conventional drawing, the pattern of underpainting in areas of pure tone, the pervasive feeling of reticence that suffuses his canvases, and the almost magical sense that Vermeer is painting not objects but light itself. Drawing on a wealth of Vermeer research and displaying an extraordinary sensitivity to the subtleties of the work itself, Philip Steadman offers in Vermeer's Camera a fresh perspective on some of the most enchanting paintings ever created.Amazon.com Review
Philip Steadman's remarkable book Vermeer's Camera cracks an artistic enigma that has haunted art history for centuries. Over the years, artists and art historians have marveled at the extraordinary visual realism of the paintings of the 17th-century Dutch painter Jan Vermeer. The painter's spectacular View of Delft, painted around 1661, and the beautiful domestic interior The Music Lesson seem almost photographic in their incredible detail and precise perspective. Since the 19th century, experts have speculated that Vermeer used a camera obscura, an early precursor of the modern camera. However, conclusive proof was never discovered, until now. In Vermeer's Camera, Steadman proves that Vermeer did indeed use a camera obscura to complete his greatest canvases. Part art-historical study, part scientific argument, but mainly a fascinating detective story, Vermeer's Camera argues:

Vermeer had a camera obscura with a lens at the painting's viewpoint. He used this arrangement to project the scene onto the back wall of the room, which thus served as the camera's screen. He put paper on the wall and traced, perhaps even painted from the projected image. It is because Vermeer traced these images that they are the same size as the paintings themselves.

Customer Reviews (7)

Dubious Claims
I've read Philip Steadman's book, and I must say I enjoyed it a great deal, but at the end of the day, the working process that he proposes for Vermeer doesn't ring true to me. Painting upside-down, in the dark, in a tiny little cubicle? I kept wondering why a painter as accomplished as Vermeer would adopt such an arduous method, when he could simply paint what was in front of him.

As for the much-discussed "camera" look to Vermeer's paintings, his prominent highlights and detail-less shadows, Steadman hits on the simplest explanation, then passes it by, when he mentions "the view through half-closed eyes, as it were." Painters frequently squint their eyes to judge tones and eliminate fussy detail. In my opinion, Vermeer was one of history's great squinters.

Read more at Suite101: Vermeer and His Use of the Camera Obscura: Uncovering the Truth Behind Jan Vermeer's Masterpieces [...]

Isn't He Supposed to Prove a Point?
In this novel, Philip Steadman dives into the world of the artist Johannes Vermeer and seeks to prove that he did in fact use some type of camera apparatus. His book goes into a great deal of detail as to the history of the techniques and methods, but fails in my opinion in a major way. Steadman failed to actually make a steadfast argument. He used a great deal of examples that may definitely point to Vermeer's use, but he constantly contradicts himself later by saying that it is quite possible otherwise because of this, that, and the other. In the end I was left saying, "Well did he or freakin' didn't he?" Arguably it is nice to have to think about these answers after reading a book, but the title says, "Uncovering the Truth Behind the Masterpieces." In my opinion Steadman didn't uncover anything, but only opened up unbacked opinions and no concrete evidence. It was more of a "this is why 'I' think he did it."

If i had received the item i can advice about it..................
.........about this one and about all the others i ordered i pay and still waiting since December.One thing i can advice don't order anything unlessyou use Express mail

Well researched and tolerably convincing
This is a very well researched book.The author has taken great pains to measure and analyze Vermeer's paintings, finding a striking feature that many of them, when back-projected through the perspective view point at the size of the painting, imply a consistent location of a back wall to the common room used in the pictures.The author asserts that the only reasonable explanation for this coincidence is that Vermeer used a camera obscura for at least some of the layout of his paintings.

This comes off as very plausible, though the analysis is limited to paintings that include a tiled floor.It would have been interesting to see this work extended through photogrammetry of objects of known sizes in the paintings (chairs, musical instruments, etc) and applied to more of the paintings.

I think the only real failing in the argument is that Vermeer could have could have had the skill to paint perspective of this quality, and therefore not needed the aid of a camera.As pointed out in the text, he was not bound to perfect accuracy; there are some deviations.

Interesting, scholarly study
Did Vermeer use optical aids, like a camera obscura, in crafting his wonderful paintings: yes or no?

That is the question being asked here. This is a technical question, only, it adds or detracts nothing in Vermeer's ouvre and career either way. It's and interesting question though, and even an important one. What choices did Vermeer make in achieving greatness?

Steadman convincingly argues that Vermeer very likely used a camera obscura, in one form or another, in creating many of his paintings. This work starts with a thorough discussion of the inconclusive written records. Vermeer was certainly contemporary to people like van Leeuwenhoek, who pioneered microscopy, even lived in the same city at the same time. He had long exposure to trades where lenses were used regularly, and lived in a time when lenses were available commercially. All that is circumstantial and, unlike other authors, Steadman declines to read more into available facts than they said in the first place.

His real contribution is in his detailed analyses of Vermeer's paintings and their geometries, and in actual reconstructions of the rooms Vermeer portrayed and tools he might have used. This is the scientific method at work: present a falsifiable hypothesis, and create an experiment that confirms or denies it. "Is shadow in 'The Music Lesson' a credible, literal rendering of an actual scene?" His experiments from the late 80s, rebuilding rooms that match Vermeer's says "Yes." This is a delightful contrast to armchair guesswork by others, such as Wheelock, who never really checked but thought the shadows looked false.

This is a worthwhile historical and technical achievement, partially funded by the BBC for a TV special in 1989. It also stands in clear contrast to Hockney's later work on much the same question, "Secret Knowledge." Hockney asked, as an artist, do these tools give me the experience captured in the old masters' art? His answer, achieved by personal immersion, was also "Yes." I respect Steadman's rigor as a historian and experimentalist, but this work comes off a bit dry compared to Hockney's first-person report.

It's an interesting book on an artist about whom maddeningly little is known. It's thorough, and gives future art historians a very high bar to clear. If not for the hands-on liveliness of Hockney's book, I might have ranked this one even higher.

//wiredweird ... Read more

Product Description
Did you ever think that the oatmeal container you open every morning when you make breakfast could be turned into a camera? Or that the mint tin sitting on your desk is capable of creating stunning images? In Pinhole Cameras, photographer and pinhole aficionado Chris Keeney shows you how to transform basic household containers—a shoebox, a coffee can, a matchbox—into amazing photographic devices. ... Read more