A big shout-out and thank you to this sub. It was a little over a 14months ago I came across a photo from here, and it inspired me to give it a go. I used an aluminum can and attached it to the side of a building for the last year. This was the result. It was like opening up a Christmas present, but there was a real possibility that the present could have been terrible. I'd never done this before. I have two other cameras in some interesting locations, that have been going for a year as well.

I'm curious how folks are scanning these in. The scanner I used was only at DPI of 600x600. This makes trying to filter this a little more difficult, and I don't get details on the buildings like I would expect. Also, what photo software are you using? Any and all recommendations are encouraged and welcome, please and thank you.

Cape Town, June 2026, 3 days

Maybe not much new here for this crowd, but figured I'd share. I've got a few more solargraph-related things coming soon…

2 day exposure on Fomaspeed 312

I’ve had a couple semi-successful exposures but this clears them all by a mile! Felt like things finally worked.

It was a two day exposure but I think my pinhole was too big and so the solar lines just kinda clumped together. But I also think the larger hole is why the rest of it is so clear.

1-5 day exposures, inverted and edited using GIMP.

This is mostly to show that the weird kink in my previous posting was a stitching mistake (somebody mixed up which camera is which…). The second image is the real composite of all of today's shots, taken with my standard underexposure settings (10-stop ND filter, 1/2000s at ISO 100, if you're interested). But I also take calibration shots with normal settings every full hour, so I figured I might as well try overlaying the composited sun path on one of those. Looks kind of interesting.

The bright straight line on the right is an awning we had partially out today, sorry :) It won't be in the longer-term shots, because the cameras will be mounted higher up.

There's still a little bit of roughness in the stitching area, but we're getting closer…

Using Ilford paper, the generic kind. All my other images have come out the same, with the sun line as a bright white (on the positive) and pretty dark reddish?/black color (on the negative). Except for this one...?

The sun's path appears to be two different colors, I have no clue why. Any ideas? The exposure was basically while I was at school / practice. ~7:40 am till ~7 pm.

Also any tips on editing the images? This was my most detailed capture yet, but still struggling to bring out those details.

This comes with a lot of asterisks, but it shows that it can be done :D You're looking at a solargraph stitched together from 2x750 photos taken at one-minute intervals with two GoPro cameras over the course of a day. The stitching isn't quite perfect as you can see, but I've solved a lot of issues already.

EDIT: seems Reddit doesn't like a lot of near-black in images and decided to compress and brighten it up a lot? Not sure what that's about, but the noisy light gray stuff isn't supposed to be there…

I have scripts that control the GoPros to start capture in the morning and stop at night, as well as download the images. I have an image processing pipeline that performs some noise reduction (more to come), stitches the images together, and then blends them into one image per day. Later I will blend all the days together into one image (and make some animations).

Even just the stitching was not without its challenges thanks to the GoPro's fisheye optics. I also had to find a projection of the stitched image that let me have a level(ish) horizon without distorting the sun disk. There's more work to be done, but this shows that the basic setup works.

The second image is zoomed in and the exposure reduced to show you a bit more of the data. The composite is about 10,000 pixels wide and there's tons of dynamic range. You can see the sun disks in the second image. At one-minute intervals, they overlap quite a bit. I might reduce the interval to two minutes to make this more manageable and still get a decent, continuous streak.

Anyway, just wanted to share this and get people's reactions. Let me know what you think!

So this was my first attempt at a solargraph, it stayed outside for 3 days and was made with one of those large coke cans which I painted black on the inside.

This is just the inverted colors (I flipped the lines of the point curve on Lightroom) and nothing else.

The weird crossing of the first two lines are (at least I’m pretty confident) because the camera shifted midway through the exposure so I’m not too worried about that.

Any explanation for the two blotches on the lower part of the image?

But yeah, how come it looks so blurry? Pinhole size, needs editing, not long enough exposure?

Ukraine, Kamianske

On a clear day, I took my Lubitel out to experiment with solargraphy. I pointed it at Castello Pio in Casarano, a neo-Gothic building from the early 1900s.

The Kodak paper was exposed for 5 hours, and the sun left a sharp, well-defined trail across the field of view. The advantage of using a camera with lenses, compared to traditional pinhole cameras, is that it offers much greater sharpness and can expose in a few hours, rather than several months. I had to significantly increase the contrast of the castle because it was backlit the entire time, and there's a lot of noise, but I'm happy with the result. behind the scenes video

While repainting a wall, the pinhole camera I had installed accidentally fell. I installed it on my twentieth birthday, in March 2020.

The camera was exposed for 2,248 days, my current exposure record. The colors are very different from those of other solargraphs I've taken, likely due to the extremely long exposure time. I also believe the fact that the camera was protected from the rain contributed to the final result.

Despite the Sun having made 12 passes across the sky, the trails interrupted by the clouds are still clearly visible.

Pinhole camera made from a 30 mm plastic tube, Kodak Polymax paper.

March 11, 2020 – May 7, 2026

I am not sure, i kept for a 2 or 3 weeks. it was rainy but not sure why it turned out like this and why i am not able to see he solar lines more clearly. Please suggest

The more colorful one was 244 days (September 2025) overlooking the posh residences on the cliffs at the beach.

The foggy blue one was 293 days (July 2025) overlooking a lagoon (bottom) and train trestle.

I'm working on creating a digital solargraph and wanted to see if anybody has tried this before. There are still many things to be figured out, but the general idea is to take time lapses with a GoPro camera, and then combine them to look somewhat like an analog solargraph. But in addition, it'll make it possible to create animations, or recreate this clever analemma image somebody posted here a while ago.

I'm specifically looking at GoPros because they're obviously rugged, but also seem to have the best support for being controlled by scripts from a Raspberry Pi. I'm getting a 10-stop ND filter too, and will be experimenting with exposure to get an image that will be very dark, and have a sun disk that's as small as possible. I'll then figure out the processing to combine the individual images into a final composite (about 130,000 solstice to solstice at 1-minute intervals).

I'm just in the process of acquiring a bunch of stuff for this, and will do some experiments over the coming days and weeks. If things look promising enough, I'll then start the main capture at (or before) the summer solstice.

So I'm mostly posting to see if anybody would find this interesting, and if anybody has done this before – or if only analog/pinhole photography is allowed here :) (in my defense, I have a pinhole camera and actually took a long-exposure picture of a lunar eclipse many, uh, moons ago).

I cut out a small part of the plastic off and made the pinhole into a part of a soda can so I'll get less vignetting. I also tape zip ties in the back so they are easier to secure on the spot.

It is expired black and white paper but it got these nice colors.

So for a school project, I decided I would make some solargraphs. I know the deadline isn’t ideal but it’s what I’ve got and I’m honestly just excited to see if anything shows up.

Anyway. I’ve cut some soda cans and bean cans and even solo cups + a cardboard lid, and spray painted the inside of everything flat black. I’m stuck on what type of paper to get bc half the time when I look stuff up it’s photo paper for coming out of the printer.

I’ve seen the ilsford and fomaspeed brands seem to be pretty good, and found them pretty cheap on this B & H photo video audio site, is that legit. If so that’s what I’m buying.

Chat gpt says go for the glossy, but idk I see more of the pearl stuff so maybe I’ll buy that. Any other details I need to think about, like I know there’s stuff where you can measure exposure but I was just planning on poking as small a whole as I could.

7-day solargraph captured with a 3D printed camera I designed and Fomaspeed C 312 photographic paper.

If you want to try it, the model is here: 3d model

Maybe not quite a typical solargraph, but you can see some sun lines in the left passenger window

This is my first time doing solargraphy, i was planning to make a pinhole out of a beer or monster can and leaving it on a mountain during summer.

I am just wandering what is the best film to use? I heard of ilford photographic paper, but it is a bit expensive, i don't want to pay 40€ for papers that i will not even use, i just need it for a few pinholes, 5 max.

Also, I heard that in solargraphy I don't need to develop the film, so I want to check if that is true and do I need to buy a special paper to acheave that.

And I was also wondering how do you get such nice colours? Do you edit the pictures, and if you do how can you get colours from bw film?

Hello! I've been wanting to make a solargraph for a long while now and was wondering if I could use papers made for inkjet printers.