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Need cable to fire P30+ for pinhole photography

Chunin

New member
I want to do some pinhole photography with my P30+ but need a cable that I can use to fire the back and keep it on doing long exposures. I have found about the so called wakeup cable but there is no detailed explanation of what it does and even less info on how it looks like. If I can see it then surely I can tell how it works and if it is suitable for my needs. I hace something like a remote cord equivalent of a regular camera.
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
You still need to short out a PC flash connector to the back for the exposure -- all the first button does is wake the back up.
 

Chunin

New member
Ok but what cable is that from pc synch to camera? I don't need a wake ip cable as I can just short out the pc synch twice to wake it up and then expose the frame. What cable is that from pc synch to digital back?
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
You need the special cable end to mount at the back, so the wake-up cable will work if you short the PC (lens) end during exposure. As Chris said, you could probably use the multi-pop box too, just remember to reset it for each new frame.
 

Chunin

New member
Will call Captureintegration tomorrow about that multi expo box and maybe order a synch cord too for view camera.
 

dougpeterson

Workshop Member
sorry to appear a dolt, but what is the advantage/appeal of a MFDB and pinholes?
If you're going to use a pinhole system it's nice to have a lot of resolution.

That way your completely unsharp image has a lot of pixels.

(I'm joking)

Just for fun.

http://www.doug-peterson.com/?s=pinhole



Doug Peterson (e-mail Me)
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Chunin

New member
sorry to appear a dolt, but what is the advantage/appeal of a MFDB and pinholes?
It depends on what is your question.

1) If it is digital pinhole vs film then obviously it is the instant results.

2) If it is the MFDB vs 35mm DSLR type then the answer is the following:

The only way to do pinhole with a 35mm DSLR type is using a lens cap with a pinhole just like a member has mentioned using with his MFDB too. Well that is the worst way to do pinhole photography. What it does it that it takes away what pinhole photography is about and you end up with only an unsharp picture just like the posted samples has "clearly" shown. With a lens cap you are limited to a minimum focal lenght of the lens mount to the film plane which is most cases is aproximately the lenght of a normal lens. It is around 42mm for Canon and 46mm for Nikon. So what do you get? An unsharp normal perspective picture. No vignetting on the edges and no wide angle view. Doing pinhole with a lens cap is like doing astronomy with a department store telescope. It kills the desire to do more on the fist viewing session. With a digital back and not SLR camera body you can get as close as you want to the film plane as you don't have the mirror in the middle. The best pinhole photos are wide angle with lots of vignetting which is what gives it the pinhole personality. Not that you can not do telephoto with it as it is only limited with the amount of piping that you can get but is not the norm or what most people would want. Do you can built a very thin box and put the back there. I'm going to do 25mm with the P30+ so it is wide and will give me lots of vignetting on the edges. This is real pinhole. Not the lens cap variety. The sale of lens cap pinhole should be banned.:salute:
 

dougpeterson

Workshop Member
The best pinhole photos are wide angle with lots of vignetting which is what gives it the pinhole personality. [...] This is real pinhole. Not the lens cap variety. The sale of lens cap pinhole should be banned.
I've done experimentation with pinholes of all kinds. My largest (read: most time consuming) was a 360 degree vertical slip scanning pinhole camera using three 8x10 pieces of film. Another time I created a three hole panoramic camera with a curved film plane to join the perspective points. So I'm not "just" putting a pinhole cap on a camera. To say that pinhole caps aren't "real" pinhole cameras pigeon holes what a pinhole camera is.

One thing you can do with a pinhole-cap camera is to shoot hand held and actually compose through the viewfinder (albeit it VERY roughly and only on a very bright day after letting your eye adjust to the extremely dim view). Most "real" pinhole cameras are limited to being placed on a tripod with a guesstimated field of view and exposures too long to capture anything moving. Like anything that can be an advantage or disadvantage depending on what you want to capture.

Using traditional processes ONLY in their originally envisioned forms is boring to me. But then I have a short attention span.

Doug Peterson (e-mail Me)
__________________
Head of Technical Services, Capture Integration
Phase One, Leaf, Cambo, Canon, Apple, Profoto, Eizo & More
National: 877.217.9870 *| *Cell: 740.707.2183
Newsletter: Read Latest or Sign Up
RSS Feed: Subscribe
Buy Capture One at 10% off
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Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
No advantage, JLM. We're just dorks.
Agreed, but in addition there is a tangible advantage. Not from MF backs per se, just from making pinholes with as many pixels as possible. Simply stated, the more pixels you have, the smoother the oof blur in the final image appears. It doesn't make much difference if your printing them out to 8x10's, but does when you start printing them larger, like 12x16's... At 12x16, a 10-12MP pinhole starts to look pretty rough and loses its appeal, where an 18MP+ pinhole still looks smooth -- at least IMHO.
 
When I was at SAIC, I did a Pinhole class with Ken Josephson, just before he retired. I used my 4x5 as the basis of most of my experiments, the most interesting of which was when I placed three pinholes on one lensboard with internal baffles that didn't quite reach the film plane. This allowed for about 5mm of overlap between each section. I used the camera to photograph details of architecture that were stitched (more like welded) together in camera... using polaroid for composing.

I need to scan some of those negs.

The easiest and most fun pinhole setup ever was to take the black inner box from a 50 sheet box of 4x5 film, shove a ballpoint pen through the middle to create a "pen hole" and then gaffer tape that to a sheet polaroid back. INSTANT pinhole camera.

Good Times,
CB
 

Chunin

New member
I have decided to order some lens to back synch cords so I can make the cables myself. Will probably use one of the regular Canon remotes and one of the computer type with timer and loop settings. Hopefully I have them ready for use this weekend and provide some samples.
 

gsking

New member
For what it's worth, I use a simple cell phone earbud (with answer button) as my wakeup cable. I'm assuming the P30 has the same interface as my H10, but I just plug the PC sync into one side and the trigger button into the other. Clicking the button shorts the port (as Jack mentioned) and I have 4 seconds to make my exposure.
 

Chunin

New member
For what it's worth, I use a simple cell phone earbud (with answer button) as my wakeup cable. I'm assuming the P30 has the same interface as my H10, but I just plug the PC sync into one side and the trigger button into the other. Clicking the button shorts the port (as Jack mentioned) and I have 4 seconds to make my exposure.
No, the newer backs use a multi pin connector and not the sub mini plug. Had it been the sub mini I would have had no problem as I have tons of remotes in that configuration.
 
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