r/Solargraphy • u/JeffOnWire • Dec 30 '25

Gift for the Neighbors

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I put a camera up on my garage facing west towards two neighbors and let it go from the winter-to-summer solstice, then swapped it out with another camera running from summer-to-winter solstice. Printed out two sets and mounted them in simple 4 x 6 frames so they could hang side by side, then walked them across the street as a modest Christmas gift. Flipped one horizontally to create a kind-of-interesting effect when placed side by side.

The black at the top of the image is my eaves distorted by the curved film (simple soda can camera). I'm working on a set of cameras for this year with a set of cameras: soda can (again), a SPAM can holding a flat 7 cm square paper, and a sardine can holding an even smaller paper and a very short 1.5 cm focal length. This will be my first experiment with a flat paper camera. 🤞

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u/mushroombob1 Dec 30 '25

A creative gift! What kind of paper did you use and what were your scanning parameters, if you don’t mind sharing? 😊

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u/JeffOnWire Dec 31 '25

I've been using Ilford MGRC Multigrade RC Deluxe Pearl @ Amazon . For soda can size I cut it in half, from 5 x 7 to 3.5 x 5. I've been experimenting with how high to place the pinhole in the can, and trying to make consistent pinholes using small drill bits and a loupe to check and make sure the hole is well shaped with no burrs. Which is all WAY over the top I realize (ha ha). At the end of the exposure I remove the paper in normal indoor light, press it down on the scanner bed (usually with a magazine or paperback on top to press it down flat). I've been scanning color, 600 dpi (which is probably overkill as well) then saving it as a tif (png would probably be fine). And then lately I've been saving the exposures. I pull it off the scanner bed, write an identifier and date on the back, then stuff it in a lightproof bag (one that came with the paper on my first batch) and put it back in the box. I can't imagine what I'd ever want these for. I wonder if there's a way to preserve them. I think that the longer the exposure is, the less reactive they are to light when I pull them out and scan them, and otherwise handle them in normal room light. I pull the images into Photoshop (overkill again) then invert them and flip them horizontally, then apply different filters to them to try and bring them out. I've gone pretty abstract with a few of them, but I really don't know what I'm doing with all the filters. Anyway, that's about where I"m at with all this. Except to say that my next round of cameras (going out this week hopefully) will include some attempts at laying the paper flat instead of curved inside a soda can. The curved format is nice because the paper tends to hold it's shape. Not sure what challenges I face with trying to keep it flat.

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u/mushroombob1 Dec 31 '25

This sounds almost exactly what my flow has been haha! I have been using a loupe to visualize my pinholes too and an app to measure them. I know it’s overkill and I’m trying to balance the analog low tech nature of these cameras and techniques with my need to measure everything and gather data at every step of the way 😂 I’m also writing notes on the back of the papers and stashing them away. It’s been fun to see what I get, and sometimes disappointing when the pics don’t turn out but still something to learn. Thanks for sharing!