The last, but the one I had to get no matter what.

[banana_legs]

Just a short drive away is a charming house called Lacock Abbey. My kids know it more for some of the Harry Potter movies being filmed in the cloisters under the house, but once a chap by the name of Henry Fox Talbot lived there too.

I took the chance to let some photons stream through the glass of a certain window, then through the twin pinholes of the camera.

it just had to be done

Many thanks Nick for the opportunity to play host to the instrument for a brief while.

Evan

Oriel Window at Lacock Abbey:
Untitled-1.jpg

Outside the front steps at Lacock.
Untitled-2.jpg

[dvoracek]

Evan,

I had given up all hope. I'm amazed that one of my cameras got to photograph that oriel window (sounds a little silly to say I'm honored). That must have been some trick. I recall that it's no photographs allowed. It does look like you had to use the floor for a support. They probably would have freaked out if you set it on the cabinet with the china. One strange thought is that Talbot's camera must have been about as wide angle as the Populist. All my life I thought that window would have been across a large room and I was really surprised that it was in such a narrow passage way when I saw it.

Glad to hear you had a good time with it. The pictures of the children's toys in the yard are great. This is another one of those examples where getting close up really pays off.

One of the cameras is definitely lost in the mail on it's last leg back to me, and the other currently missing in action.

Anybody interested in a 6x6 stereo camera?

[banana_legs]

Hi Nick,

The national trust wardens at Lacock are actually very good about photography; as long as you hand-hold the camera and do not use flash. The rules are ok for a DSLR with a fast lens, but not pinhole friendly in theory. However I discovered that when you show them the camera and tell them its story, they sometimes bend the rules a little I had a small folding tripod about 6" high under the camera, which I placed on the far side of the corridor. I used the 400ISO colour film to keep the exposure down and left it there for about a minute. Many folks walked passed in that time; luckily no one stopped right in front of it.

They have some of his 'mousetrap' cameras in the museum there; I had never thought of what the focal length may be, but yes, with its larger negative, the FOV does seem to be similar.

It is a shame that the cameras may have been lost, but it was a really fun experiment all the same.

I made a 6x4.5 stereo a while back; contact prints from the negative are good to view as they are just getting big enough. It was an old 620 folder that I modified to take 120 reels; I must take it out and about again. 6x6 would be interesting as they would give that little bit more side-to-side coverage which is where the stereo populist really wins over the tall-narrow format of getting 2 images onto a 6x9 frame (or even 2 on a 5"x4" sheet).

Evan

[Tom Persinger]

very cool! I knew I'd left this thread up for a good reason!

[Ned.Lewis]

Evan, that's excellent. To think of the light that has passed through that window!

[dwerg85]

Another vote for the 6x6 stereo.