Pinhole
A few weeks ago, I built a pinhole camera with a kit. It's cardboard, held together with Elmer's glue and tape and rubber bands. There's nothing automatic or battery-operated about it, which is, you know, about as opposite as you can get from the digital cameras I'm used to!
I don't have a picture of the camera itself, but here's me using it:
The exposure time is anywhere from 1/4 of a second to 3.5 minutes, depending on lighting conditions. It's really hard to judge 1/4 of a second when you're lifting and lowering the shutter with your hand. Also, the first seven pictures are to be wound 1 1/4 times, and then each picture after that just once. But I lost track! So some of the pictures weren't lined up properly with the film.
Which is all to say, I took 48 pictures and came out with about six that are recognizable. *g*
This is Steve playing Rock Band. I think I left the shutter up for a long time here.
Here's the original version of a picture of my Mickey phone (which I love *g*)...
...and here's a version after I messed with the levels in Photoshop.
This is from the beach in San Diego. A muuuuuch shorter exposure time than the indoor ones above, which I think contributed to a little bit of unsteadiness of my hand, and thus the blurriness. Oh well.
This one is possibly even more blurry! It's a playground (also in San Diego), and those things are little concrete dolphins. My mom is actually leaning on one.
And these are Galapagos tortoises at the San Diego Zoo.
In conclusion: FUN! I'll keep messing around with it, now that I have some idea of what to possibly do to make these better. Like... get a tripod, maybe. (It, surprisingly, DOES have a tripod mount!) The housekeeper at the hotel picked up the camera by the viewfinder, which lifts the shutter, and left it sitting on the nightstand open for goodness knows how long, and that picture actually came out very clear! Although, it was an amazingly interesting picture of... the edge of the bed. *laugh* So maybe for the next roll, I'll try some longer exposures.