My last few pinholes have been with the RSS 6x6F camera and I realised recently that I hadn’t shot the Ondu multi-format pinhole camera since purchasing the RSS. When my son and I decided to visit Hexham Abbey I naturally thought about what camera to bring. I had shot there with large format and medium format so decided for a change to take a pinhole approach.
Since cathedrals, abbeys, and some churches often offer a view including a tall chancel and impressive roof, I thought that a vertical view with the widest setting on the Ondu might be worth a try. I loaded a roll of FP4 and left out the film guides which results in the camera capturing a 6x12cm image.

My meter readings suggested that an exposure of 15-30 minutes would be needed once reciprocity was accounted for. Now I could just about manage to wait around for 15 minutes between shots but a 30 minute shot was going to make it impractical to take more than a couple of shots.
So I decided to expose each of these images for 15 minutes. If they were a little underexposed then at least the highlights in the windows wouldn’t be burned out.

I took four shots in all at the Abbey. Three are shown here, but one in landscape orientation didn’t look so good so I haven’t shown it here.
Given that the camera only gives six shots in 6*12 mode I could have shot a lower exposure index, say 80, and given the whole film a reduced developing time to contain the contrast range. But I didn’t think of that, and hey it’s only pinhole.

For the image above, I knew that I only wanted part of the image that the 6×12 etched guides were suggesting, but I had already made my choice of format and decided just to waste a but of film at either side.
With two shots left on the film, the next day I took the same camera to a stretch of the Devils’ Water, a stream to the south of Hexham. Now I was out of doors so there was much more light but the shot still needed 15 seconds as it was shady around the river bank.

By now I was heading back to the car and in the mood to take the remaining shot so I could develop the film the next day. That’s a time when I might experiment and have a happy accident or I might leave my judgement behind and wish I hadn’t taken the shot.
This time it was closer to the second shot and I got a not very interesing tree picture. I miscalculated the framing, which remains difficult without a viewfinder, even after practice, and included too much grass in the foreground (cropped out in the version below) and cut off the top of the tree.

On reflection I was particularly happy with the first three images, and given that pinhole photography is a bit hit-and-miss, that’s not a bad keeper rate out of 6 images exposed.
Frederick Evans would have been jealous of that stairway shot.
An excellent series of images, especially given the unknowns pinhole cameras put in the way of the photographer.
Those abbey shots are lovely Kevin. They’re crying out for a ghost to be added though. Like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_of_Newby_Church. 🙂
I thought I might get some non-scary ghosts because there were quite a few people walking in front of the camera, but the 15 minute exposures were too long to capture them.
[…] memory jog only came after looking at pinhole images posted on Kevin Allan’s excellent blog filmphotography.blog/2019/09/25/ondu-pinholes-hexham-abbey/ Well worth visiting for his images and articles about cameras, materials & […]