Blended Adventures #1

Andrew Bartram

A while back we had Chris Peregoy as a guest on the Lensless Podcast Show 87, you can listen in all the usual places. https://www.podbean.com/ew/dir-wceyk-8a34fd5 – paste this link into Google.

Chris is the mastermind behind the Pinhole Blender website selling these wonderful pinhole cameras with three pinholes giving blended images across a 120 negative frame of 6×17 – and looks like this.

The 120 Blender from Chris Peregoy http://www.pinholeblender.com/index.htm

The centre pinhole will make a standard image on a curved plane but the two side pinholes will make sort of anamorph images stretching across the film plane – it really is bonkers, in a great way.

Chris had a “second” that he sent me in the post along with a neat little anamorphic camera and a magnetic tripod holder and a roll of black tape!

It has taken me a while to finish the first roll of HP5, I really wanted to use this in an urban environment but COVID-19 has gotten in the way and I’ve barely been out of Warboys.

Anyway after a few false starts I loaded her up and finally finished the roll – two shots by the river at a campsite and two in our local church yard.

#1 – West View Marina a boat, trailer and trees! – has potential
#2 – the middle pinhole was looking at this grave marker and the other two at the church yard – not a great use of the three holes I think
#3 – from a dim part of the church yard with the outer part under exposed – I’m not sure if I should be somehow compensating or balancing exposure between the three pinholes….or I’m just over thinking it
#4 – looking at the river as a leisure boat came past – didn’t really work out as I thought but trying to previsualise what this camera does makes my head spin.

So what do I think?

Well, I think I have to build a project around this camera, a blended panoramic can result in a very “dreamlike” and surreal image and so I will probably do my usual thing and take it out into the fenland to see how it brings elements in the landscape together.

Mmmmmmm – thanks Chris, another creative tool.

Stay Safe.

Published by Andrew Bartram

Living, making negatives and darkroom prints on the edge of the Cambridgeshire Fenlands Co host of the Large Format Photography and the Lensless Podcasts.

3 Comments

    1. Thanks Colin. You can use the camera in a number of ways. So far I have opened up each pinhole in turn without moving the camera. So what you get is a central rendering of the image onto an inner circular film plane then the other two come at the same piece of film from the sides – his website shows the workings better than I’m explaining.

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