Composing with a pinhole camera

[coops]

Just got the Ilford pinhole and trying to figure this out. Seems composing is mostly guesswork? The kit also comes with an exposure calculator and would like to know if those of you who may use a pinhole take an incident reading, spot reading or both.

Cheers

[Walter Calahan]

Incident readings when shooting transparency film.

You might wish to draw "sight lines" on the pinhole box. I find them helpful.

With a ruler, find the center over the pinhole on two sides of the box. Mark the edge of the box where the edge meets the center line. Then with the ruler draw two straights line from the center point to the mark where your film lines up with the focal plane. One line goes left, and the other right.

Now you can sight down these lines to get the angle of view of your pinhole camera.

Good luck.

[Greg Lockrey]

You can make a mask for whatever format you are using, 4x5, 6x7, etc and place it in front of the camera above the pinhole and look through it with you eye directly over the back of the camera and in the center of the mask. It gets you very very close to the field of view. Zero Image cameras already have the camera "marked" for all formats for you.

[JoeV]

I've used many pinhole cameras over the years, and the most accurate framing in my experience is with using sighting lines or dots on the sides and top of the camera body. You position the lines so as to correspond to the edges of the film when mounted in the camera.

In use, I typically adjust the horizontal position of the camera atop the tripod first (after leveling the tripod head) and then only afterwards do I use the side-mounted viewing lines to adjust the vertical framing.

These sighting marks can be applied to any commercially made pinhole camera easily with thin adhesive automotive pin striping tape. You can also get fancy and do inlaid woodworked marquetry, or alternatively pinhead brass screws as sighting dots.

~Joe

[coops]

Thanks guys