Alex Galmeanu’s Pinhole Fashion Photography on Kodak T-Max 400

All images by . Used with Creative Commons Permission.

When photographer Alex Galmeanu loaded up a pinhole camera with Kodak T-Max 400, he…wait. Yes. Kodak T-Max 400 is a film that is designed to helped render as much detail as possible and it was paired with a type of photography that isn’t exactly known for its detail rendition. But in turn, T-Max 400 loans itself to pinhole photography well simply because of the way that it works.

According to Alex:

A Pinhole Camera is a simple camera without a lens and with a single small aperture, effectively a light-proof box with a small hole in one side. Exposures can typically range from few seconds up to as much as several hours. The effect was noted in the 5th century BC in China and has been refined over the centuries.

This fashion story was shot on a home-made designed 6x7cm format pinhole camera and every picture was exposed several seconds on an Kodak T-max 400 ASA 120 roll film.

The camera itself was made from several machine-cut Forex layers installed on a Mamiya 120 Roll Film Magazine. The focal lens distance was set at 52mm (similar angle to a 26mm lens on a full-frame DSLR camera) with an aperture close to f173.

The images are also fantastic in terms of composition and technicalities. T-Max loans itself to being able to work with a fair amount of details in either the shadows or highlights while not working so much with the midtones. And if you’ve looked at a low of pinhole photography, that’s perfect. While Kodak Tri-X also does a pretty good job, the nature of T-Max lends itself to the more ethereal look that pinhole photography is known for.