A Saturday at the Mission

Here are two shots taken with my wood 8x10 pinhole camera that I purchased a few weeks ago. I have to say, it is one of my best purchases. I went to San Diego to visit a few spots this past Saturday, Nov. 28th, and while I didn't get to all of them, I did manage to capture a few sights. The Mission San Diego, by the way, is closed, but you can loll around on the outside and take a few photos.

This is the exterior of the church. It is a very beautiful church, on a par with San Luis Rey in Oceanside. I set up with the tripod, using Arista 200 film in my holders, and also, having attached an orange filter to the front. I gave it 40 seconds in each case, and I still feel I overexposed. I am getting a feel for this combination, and the f stop for this camera must be fast. I think, next time, I will give an exposure like this one only 20 seconds. I went ahead and developed afterwards with my new 20th Century Camera reel and my new Patterson 4 roller tanks. I have to say, I am having no problems with this combination. Yes, it does use a lot of chemicals, but I can always pour the developer back into my bottles and reuse one more time.

And this is another spot where we can find a statue of one of the founding friars. The thing is, I put the camera almost right in front of the stature, and it is so wide angle that it still saw much more than I thought. It is amazing but so. Once again, it also captured the shadow thrown by the tripod.

I will have to import these negatives into my laptop where I have a copy of Photoshop to get much better inversions.