« [ KODAK EASYSHARE Z712 IS digital camera ] | Main | [REVIEW—TAMRON SPAF 90mm Di Macro lens] »
August 16, 2007
[ A MYSTERIOUS BEAUTY ]
THIS WEEK DPEXPERT TOOK TIME OFF FROM MEGAPIXELS, shutter lag, auto focus, face recognition, image noise and all the other technological marvels and disappointments of digital photography to get back to the basics. We popped into the City Library gallery at 253 Flinders Lane to look at the exhibition “Melbourne:Pinhole”. (Gallery@City Library until 30 August.)
Photographer David Tatnall, working with a grant from the Melbourne City Council, is exhibiting a collection of photographs of the city taken with two pinhole cameras that he has made himself.
Tatnall’s photographs (visit his online gallery for samples of his work) are well known even if his name isn’t. He is the man who has photographed the sacred heart of the old growth forests of East Gippsland to show us what we will be losing if the timber industry has its way. His photographs, taken with a cumbersome and fiendishly expensive Toyoview camera, played a part in persuading the Kirner cabinet to give parts of the forest the protection of national park status.
The Toyoview produces 10 by 12 centimetre images that Tatnall turns into prints of exceptional sharpness, detail and tonal range. So what is this with crude pinhole cameras that set him back less than ten dollars?
“I’d been using pinhole as a teaching aid at the schools where I teach photography as Artist-in-residence. These cameras were simply tin cans or boxes with holes punched in them to show how simple photography really is. And each time I do it the students get excited about the pictures they get from a tin can.
“There was something about the quality of them that made me take the next step to make a large format pinhole camera that combines the techniques from traditional large format photography by using 20 by 25 cm sheet film.”
The two cameras used for the exhibition photographs are made from scrap timber salvaged from a builder’s skip. They are boxes, painted black inside and with a slot at the back to hold the film carriers, of the type used in traditional view cameras.
The pinhole is made with a sewing needle and the aperture has been precisely calculated so that exposure can be determined using a light meter, rather than by lucky guess. One camera has a focal length akin to a wide angle lens and the other has a normal perspective.
The viewfinder is a V on the box top made from electrician’s tape. The shutter is a piece of swivelling plywood and exposures may range from a few seconds to an hour. The film is hand processed and contact printed.
The finished prints have the mysterious beauty of photographs taken in the late 19th century with wet plate cameras. Where many pinhole photographs have an accidental, flukey look to them Tatnall’s look as deliberate and intentional as any picture taken with a conventional camera.
David Tatnall chooses to work with the traditional silver-based photo materials and resists the seductive ease of digital. His methods, materials and photographs are a romantic reminder that the world is analogue, not digital.
According to one chap a 20 by 25 cm sheet of film is a 1.19 gigapixel sensor.
*
Posted by terry at August 16, 2007 12:33 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://bleedingedge.com.au/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1346