There are lots of analog photography stores in Vienna. The epicentre is through the Westbahnstrasse. There are many stores selling analog cameras. Among them is Joe Geier’s Mint and rare store. This store organises twice a year a huge analog flea market that is called “Wiener Fotobörse” http://www.wiener-fotoboerse.at . But lately it grows slowly from a flea market to an analog event. Beside the flea market you have now also an area with an exhibition and other analog focused companies. I had my own booth there for the second time and got lots of great feedback.
There even exists an early bird ticket, because so many people want to get a great deal on used equipment.you’ll find there always some wired lenses and cameras.
At home I loaded a dry plate into my camera just in case I find a good subject. And on my way home, I realised that I passed a place where I had a surreal moment. Many years ago, I was driving through this forest (Wienerwald) very late at night when I was stopped by a herd of deer. They just stood in the middle of the road and looked at me. It was such a beautiful moment, but also a bit scary because they didn’t move. Now standing on the same place again I wanted to capture this kind of feeling again.
I got my Century camera out of the booth and set everything up for the capture.
The dry plates I use (From Zebra http://zebradryplates.com ) have an iso sensitivity of 2 and are only sensitive to the blue spectrum of light. That made my endeavour a bit more complicated. Because It was late afternoon and it was already getting darker and that means less blue light. A lot of cars were passing by, while I was standing there and looking at the image I wanted to capture. So I came up with the idea to use the lights of the cars to light my scene. Now I had another problem, I did not know when cars will pass me, so I just trusted my ears and before a car arrived I put the lens cap of for the exposure. You can see how I did it in the video.
I really like how it turned out. If your are interested in salt prints, visit my shop: shop.mhaustria.com
At the end I want to mention a new backpack and tripod I got for testing. If you have watched my videos, you will now that I always travel with my heavy duty case and my wooden tripod. That is sometimes very frustrating. After lots of discussion with the vendor, I gave it a shot and was very surprised how this made my life easier. I can now carry my whole 8×10 large format camera including a tripod, lenses, plate holders and all needed accessories on my back. Sure, its heavy, but it makes my life easier.
Lots of space and protection. Funny enough, on the analog event some people were interested about my new backpack and tripod. Even the tripod does look a bit fragile for such a big camera, it is really steady if you don’t use heavy duty lenses on your camera.
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Lately I started with alternative printing techniques. Salt prints and als cyanotypes are something I want to learn more about. I did the first exposures with the sun and it turned out really well. But I couldn’t make always time during the day, beside that sometimes the sun moved to fast and I had the prints in the shade, or it even was to late for sun printing at all.
I got great results in the sun, but I just don’t have always time during the day
Thats when I looked at tutorials for UV exposure boxes. There are so many great tutorials with beautiful results everywhere. But all I found needed lots of time to build it and a dimmer and timer was not included in the ones I found. So I constructed one by myself, with as less as possible diy knowledge needed to build it. Even I am very confident with soldering and building stuff, I wanted to have a quick solution. Find the full tutorial in my latest video (Scroll down for the full material List)
I started with a 60x40x12cm Eurobox – you can use whatever box you need. Maybe even a nice wooden one.With a utility knife I could easily cut through the box to make myself a door with a hinge. Thats a step you can easily skip. I only made it, so I can access the box, without lifting it up.I used a little clamp and a piece of rope to hold the door in place when its opened.To make the box more reflective, I used an aluminum tape. its easy to cut and easy to mount.Now I mounted the led strips on the aluminum foil. Before that I drilled a hole for the cables in the box. If you use the same sized box, be sure to always leave the same with as they led strip is between each lane. Don’t worry if you make a mistake, my led strips came easily off and I got them easily on again.These are digital dimmers that have also a time included.After you install the app, the dimmers connect automatically via bluetooth. They also group together as one single light. Now you can change the output power of the lights, or set two kind of timers. I like these a lot, because I can precisely write down the time I used and also write down the light intensity. Another cool thing is, that you can close the app and even if you set a timer before the dimmers will remember without a phone connection.If you don’t want to use your phone, then you will like these. Simple on, off and dimmer function.It may not be as symmetrical as some others, but it worked really well.Thats the first print from a glass negative out of the UV box. I think it turned out pretty well.One light strip should put out 36Watts of power. I measured only 2,2 Amperes. If I calculate that by 12 Volts I get 26.4 Watts. I already contacted the company who produces the strips, but didn’t hear back so far. I will let you know how this goes. I think the power supplies are a bit on the week side. But don’t worry to much about that, as you saw my print looked really well. I am just a curious person and wanted to know if they deliver what they stated on the packaging.There you have it, a very easy diy UV box exposure unit build. Enjoy building it!
Eine multimediale Zeitreise zum Ursprung der Fotografie.
Erlebt mit mir den historischen Nassplattenprozess in Form von mikroskopischen Aufnahmen, dreidimensionalen Porträts und 4K-Videos. Bei dieser Reise führe ich euch durch die Geschichte, stelle euch authentisches Equipment vor und präsentiere die daraus entstandenen extrem ausdrucksstarken und hochauflösenden Porträts auf einer 9×16 Meter großen Laserprojektion in 8K. So habt ihr Fotografie noch nie erlebt!
One of the most beautiful places in Austria – During poppy flower season there is a beautiful place to visit here in Austria. The Mohndorf (poppy seed village) in Armschlag. At exactly that place our „Menschenbilderausstellung“ (human pictures exhibition) was exhibited with one of my inspired series portrait. I love that place. Beautiful scenery, good food and a wonderful exhibition.
This topic brings often lots of emotion up. And honestly I was struggling myself buying lenses with scratches for some time. I still do. Thats why I wanted to take a closer look into this topic . Gary https://www.instagram.com/garygeezerphotoart/ sent me a scratched lens some time ago and therefore made this video possible. Thanks a lot for that!
This old Ross projection lens got lots of fungi and scratches all over the glass
But this is not the first scratched lens that I got, I bought a used canon 24mm lens a while ago from a shop for very little money. I knew already that the little scratches will not affect the image, but I still had a bad feeling. After Some years I can assure you, that all images that I shot with it looked great
my scratched canon 24mm lens – no issue at all to work with it
You still are not sure if you should get a scratched lens for a good price? Then have a look at my video, where I show how I shoot the plates with a scratched lens. I discuss this topic with a fellow wet plate artist who is also a specialist in renovation of historic photographic equipment: Denis of wetplatedreams.com Denis started recently a YouTube channel where he spreads his knowledge of historic lenses.
As promised I posted the hires scans of the plates underneath. One plate is shot with the old Ross projection lens and one is shot with this very new Zeiss Epic projection lens.
This projection lens is as clean as it gets
Can you guess which plate was shot with the scratched lens? Click on the highres crops to see them in full resolution. You can use the chapters of the video to chump to the part where I explain what plate was shot with the scratched lens.
Shooting wet plates with this projection lenses can be very tough, because the dof is very thin. I also think that one of the lenses had some chromatic aberration. That means, that the blue light is focusing on a different distance than the visible light. This is sometimes also called chemical blurring or chemical miss focus with the wet collodion process, because the wet collodion process sees only some parts of the UV light spectrum (about 420 to 490nm). I can only focus on the light I can see with my eyes, but some lenses focus because of the chromatic aberration the limages for wet plates on a different spot. Thats how a miss focus can happen. But you can see how extremely sharp both lenses performed anyway. To judge the sharpness for image A, have a look at the top and the right side of the cropped scan.
Even I knew what was the plate that was shot with the scratched lens, and I still mixed them up and was convinced I was right when I showed it to my intern, shows how similar the plates are. This was another point that went to the scratched lens. Scratches and fungus mostly cover only a small percentage of the lens and thats the reason it won’t affect the image that much as you would think.
So what does that mean, should you buy scratched lenses? From our perspective, you definitely can buy scratched lenses. You will save money and still get the same results. It only affects the value. As always, it depends how big the damage of the lens is. More about that in my video. If you buy lenses as an investment, you probably will look for a mint lens, but here you have to put lots more money on the table. At the end, it all depends on your needs.
Excited and proud to share this with you. Chad from Tin Questions interviewed me about my life and my portrait work. I had such a great time and I think it turned out wonderful. Read the intro in Chad’s words:
I recently went camping and got ate up by mosquitos. My next guest on “Tin Questions”, Austrian wetplate photographer Markus Hofstätter, lives in a town known for these pesky insects. Not only is Markus a well known European photographer, he is also a great resource to the wetplate community, sharing his knowledge, doing equipment reviews and similar to “Tin Questions”, conducting the occasional interview. Hear how a love of shooting pool with both sticks and cameras eventually turned into a desire to slow down and create beautiful images using a historic process. Listen to “Tin Questions” on your favorite podcast provider. https://open.spotify.com/show/4GtyKMPDLzL9wGIdjXu5do https://podcasts.apple.com/at/podcast/tin-questions/id1662388680?i=1000623166166
Ep. 13: Hofstätter’s Intensely Personal Portraits vs. AI
by Erik Schlicksbier, Marwan El-Mozayen
Wet plate collodion portrait photographer Markus Hofstätter is our guest in this episode. He creates particularly individual, intimate portraits by collaborating closely with the persons he portrays. This human aspect is especially important to him despite all the virtuosity necessary to create wet plate collodion images. We were also interested in Markus’ view of current developments in the field of AI. Join us in this podcast for an exciting conversation about the present and future of photography.
In todays post I’ll use photography to make memories for my cherry tree that I grew up with since I was a little boy.
Many years ago I renovated the house of my grandma and with that came also a big garden full of trees. Every year I am lucky to harvest fresh raspberries, apples, pears, cherries and many other fruits. It’s so wonderful to wake up in the morning and get yourself some fresh breakfast from the garden.
This was the garden when I inherited it, you can see parts of the huge cherry tree in the background
The biggest and probably oldest tree of all is my cherry tree. I remember climbing it when I was little. It brings a wonderful big shade during the hot days and it’s fruits are so delicious.
you can see how big my cherry tree was many years agoThe recent years thunder storms and heavy rain hit really hard on the tree. Its missing about half of its branches on one side.
I always thought this giant beauty will outlive me for sure. But after the last visit from a gardner I learned that the tree is probably completely hollow already and it it will be soon not save anymore to walk under it. That really made me sad, because I have so many memories with this tree. That was the moment, when I realised, that I want to capture a last memory on an ultra large format ambrotype. I captured already a tintype of some cherry blossoms of this tree many years ago. and I am really glad that I did.
For this project I brought my 12×16″ wooden Ultra Large Format came into my garden. Lenswise I decided to go with my 360mm Voigtländer Heliar universal.
I did a similar plate with the same setup last year, when I captured the rebirth of one of my apple trees. The tree looked like It was dying, but it grew out of it self again. When I thought it was dying, I gave it another year. And exactly in this year it grew new branches. And yesterday I had the first of its apples again for breakfast.
I exposed the apple tree ambrotype for the trunk of the tree to get a bright look. With that I get lots of solarization where the branches touch the sky and I think this looks great on glass plates.
But for the cherry tree I wanted to do things a bit differently. Thats why I used a very old collodion, old developer and a stronger fixer. With overexposing again, this should give me a warmer look with again lots of solarization.
The wet plate process is mostly seeing blue light and thats why the sky is easily overexposed. I really love how this turned out.
Maybe you ask yourself why I exposed for the tree trunk on both of these images. If I would have exposed for the green leaves or thin branches, the ambrotypes would have been much more contrasty you may think. My thoughts are, that the trunk is one of the most important parts of the tree. If it gets hollow, there is a great chance, that the tree will die.
As always I did a scan of the plate, to have kind of a copy of it. If you want to know more about this huge scanner, have a look here: https://youtu.be/Oi3Tef3zZPEI always try to get the scan as close to the real thing, but to see the light reflecting on the silver when it hits the glass plate is not is something you can not replicate in a scan.This will be a memory that lasts forever . To see these two plates side by side, please check the end of my video, a photo or scan just won’t do justice. For me the apple tree plate stands for a new beginning and the Cherry tree p late for the end.I am really sad that the tree must go. But where life ends there will be a new one. After it is gone, I will plant a new cherry tree there. And for sure I will do some plates of it. portrait (c) Michael Liebert
I chose these portrait of me here, because it fits in perfectly into this story. Some time ago I booked a portrait session with Michael Liebert. He knew that I am connected to my garden and to this tree, thats why he choose to take my portrait there. And now this portrait is the prefect fit for my story today.
This two tintypes are going to Peter and Nolan. Two fellow wet plate artists who support me on http://patreon.mhaustria.com – Thanks a lot for your support guys. Want yourself one, follow the link ans support me there 🙂
