I did a live stream about different types of varnish for my Patreon supporters (If you join tier 2, you can rewatch the recording of the live stream). Because some of you complained after my posting about Lukas varnish that this one is not available in your country, I bought more different ones and did this video. Enjoy guys: I show tested lots of interesting alternatives. My favourite right now is the Cobra odourless varnish gloss 102. You can get it here: international https://amzn.to/3YAVx8k Germany https://amzn.to/429li2D
In short words “this lens is something else”. It’s extremely fast, huge and has a strange focus distance. It was used in Sony CRT Projectors from 1997. I bought it some years ago from a very interesting guy. He had so many more great stuff in his shop and I regret that I did not buy more. It took me some time to find the right opportunity to use that lens. But I think it was worth the waiting. I am glad my friend and former workshop participant Alois Stingl came over with is wonderful ultra large format camera.
Before I could use it, it needed some cleaning, I used a cloth that was soaked with water and just put it on the lens without wiping to avoid more scratches.
with some patience I could clean it.
I measured the lens at infinity to calculate the F-Stop. I measured 135mm and the front element was 145mm That is about a F0.9 lens. But a document I found on the internet told me its more an F 1.0 lens. Still crazy fast.
You can see here how short the focusing distance is. That makes it hard to focus un an ultra large format camera.
When I saw the yellow coating on the front element of the lens, I thought about Mathieu Stern’s videoabout radioactive lenses. If it really is made of Thorium, it is indeed radioactive, but only for a very small amount. Watch Mathieu’s video to learn more about this Material
Thorium was used to get more light into the lenses back then.
Because the lens is very fast it is still dangerous. If it focuses the sun on something, it will start to burn immediately. That’s the reason you should not put the lens near a window and always put a lens cap on it.
In the video I will show you how easy you can start a fire with that lens
I thought it would be interesting to calculate the crop factor of an 40x50cm ultra large format camera. If you use the common formula to calculate crop factors you will see that this plate size has a crop factor of 0.0067 compared to a full frame sensor. With that you also can calculate the comparable depth of field F-Stop. This would also be F 0.0067 compared to F 1.0 on a full frame camera. When I tried to focus on the ground glass, I could barley find something in focus. Thats why you see me focusing for a very long time.
it took quite some time to focus with this very fast lens.I think this shows pretty well how sensor and plate sizes compare
But there is more. a 140mm lens is a tele lens on a full frame camera, but it’s a wide angle lens on an ultra large format camera. This is because of the bigger plate size of the ULF camera. listen to my full explanation in the video.
My drawing shows in a simple way that the subject needs to be farer away from a full frame sensor the get the same angle of view as the close setup of the ULF camera.
To “connect” the lens to the camera, I designed and printed a basic flange in Tinkercad. It needed some pool line and tape, but eventually it worked out.
I think Tinkercad is one of the most yeas to use tools for 3D printing.a very basic part, but incredible helpful No screws, just tape, pool liner and my 3d print. Sounds funny, but worked wonderfully
The next issue was the fact that my darkroom was not made for 40x50cm plates. only for 30x40cm ones. After some tests with smaller plates, we only had one cup of developer left. Beside that, everything starts to get unpleasantly expensive if you pour on plates with this size. So my goal was to make it work with only one attempt. I did some dry runs to get comfortable with everything. Not only the dark room work was something I had to prepare for, but also the camera. These old beauties all have some quirks. Besides that, Alois made a beautiful plate holder by himself. These holder needed also some special attention. But as explained in the video, I love these challenges. It makes the result at the end even more sweet.
To calculate the strobe power I needed, I used my wet plate strobe calculator that I created for my Patreon supporters. Since I made it, I use it all the time for myself, because it makes life much easier with the wet plate process. If you are a fan of analog photography and the wet plate process, have a look at our wet plate conversation magazine on Flipboard. Besides many great stories about our favourite process, you’ll wind there also work from other wet plate artists.
I really like how this portrait turned out. As expected it is very abstract because of the F-Stop and the wide angle lens.Here you can see again how huge that tintype is.
But this is not the end, because of some kind of funny coincidence, a former workshop participant sent me a very similar lens over. I am thinking to do a still life plate with that one. What do you guys think?
Two very similar lenses. Funny how sometimes things turn out.
But there is more, I got also a very tiny lens. I guess I need to build a camera for this one
A full functional lens in the size of a thumb. I haven’t seen such a thing before. What a cutie.
I hope you enjoyed that journey. It took me a long time to finish everything, but I am again glad that I worked through it.
I see more and more lines on tintypes these days. From my point of view these appear because of glue residue. In todays video I show you how you can get rid of them. Hope this helps. Let me know if it solved this for you or if you have still this issue. Scroll down for samples
More than 8 years ago I decided to go down this path. Creating all the chemicals I need by myself, refurbishing cameras and lenses by myself, and sometimes creating new parts/recipes myself. This path can be very rewarding and enriching, but there are also dark moments that take a lot of energy. In these 8 years I have experienced and learned a lot. But while working with this process I will never stop learning, it is a constant problem solving and listening to your gut feelings. I think that is also one of the reasons why I love doing portraits with it. Taking a lot of time for a single portrait is another reason. People who have been portrayed by me will certainly be able to name many other reasons why this kind of art is so inspiring. In today’s video you will get a better impression of what I have written.
It was a pleasure to immortalize you on pure silver dear Rita
woohooo – how cool is that. My wet plate portrait made it to the photograph of the year. Thanks to all of you who voted for me and also thanks to Simone Stecher for this nice interview. You can find the digital Version of the interview here: https://news.wko.at/news/niederoesterreich/Der-Geschichten-Erzaehler.html
My own prediction about what will photography be in the future and what I will do about it
I am not doing a rewind or recap this year. I think there are too many of these out there and I have mostly the feeling it’s only a fill-in. You can watch my “end of 2022 studio tour”video or myrecent scanner renovation video if you want to watch something instead of reading this article.
This rose was so beautiful on the last day of the year. I saw her when I put some treats on the trees for the birds. It survived the cold temperatures and is still standing. It reminded me that I am a similar plant that is still standing during that turbulent times of photography
The pink elephant in the room
It’s there, and everybody is seeing it (Also non photographers). Some people are scared, some are angry and others ignore it. What I am talking about? AI, like Midjourney, Dall-Eor the text focused chatGPT. This will not change our world, it changed it already. The ai integration in our lives started a little sneaky, with some cool filters for example, google recaptcha, or enhancements for our phone cameras. Text-wise, we had chat bots that were mostly bad and voice assistants that were somewhere inbetween. Close your eyes and paint your own picture about how you felt about ai at the beginning of 2022. And now face reality and think how much it has improved in the last 5 Months and how much it improves now on a daily bases. For me it’s crazy how great these generated images/portraits look like and how they get better by the hour. It gets harder and harder for me to identify these generated images. I think these “calculated” pictures can be very useful sometimes and many of them look great.
My ai article for the c’t Fotografie magazine – this includes also an interview with the ai artist Klaudia Ratzinger
But I also think that all these generated images should have a digital watermark, so social media and websites can tag them as generated. People need to know if that image they are looking at is real or generated. I know that there is Photoshop as well, but these ai tools can be operated form a 5 year old and the results will fool you. Ai affects already so many business, not only photography, but also writers, lawyers, translators, book authors and many many more. I recently saw an article that a guy used chatGPT to create a children’s book. He also asked chatGPT to write down descriptions for pictures, so other ai picture generators can create imagery for the book from this description. He is selling the finished product now on Amazon. I also read a reddit thread where there was the need for a letter from a lawyer. Somebody asked chatGPT to write a letter and the user asking for a lawyer letter had success with it. You don’t have any programming skills? just ask chatGPT to write a script/program for you.
“Words can be powerful” gets a totally new meaning these days. Talking with chatGPT can also be hilarious – more at the end of this posting
There is so much more you can do with chatGPT
Does that mean we need to be scared as a photographer? I don’t think so. Let me explain:
At the beginning of photography, painters were upset because photographers had no idea about posing and light. Of course it was much easier to get a portrait from one day to another. That changed crime scene documentation totally.
Later black and white film photographers were upset about color film photography.
At the beginning of 2000, film photographers were upset about digital photography
And later digital photographers were upset about phone cameras
And now the same discussion starts with ai generated images. Even we use ai already for many years in our phones (or how do you think it was possible to capture a detailed moon photo with your phone?)
And today all these mentioned techniques are still coexisting. That’s why I think they will also coexist in the future. I think good photographers must be “stage managers” these days. They need to sell an experience. Something the customer will remember for a very long time. For example, when somebody gets their wet plate portrait taken in my studio, they for sure will remember that forever.
This kind of photography is so different in our fast moving world. Sure, people could use a tintype filter. But that is like seeing a great dinner on a photograph instead of going there and enjoying it. Or think of a wet plate workshop, or any other kind of photography workshop. Creating something by yourself is always exciting and fun.
Workshops are always fun
This works also for digital. I just had a business shooting for two days and this can be a great experience as well. People were excited and happy.
I do lots of business shootings, most of them are for bigger companies, but also single ones like this one of Mathieu Stern.
I think that may be a different story for non portrait photographers, like food, architecture or product photographers. But a lot of companies are working already with generated (3D renderings) images for their catalogs. And as far as I know, these generated images are directed by photographers. Please comment how you think other photography business will be affected by ai.
Relax
That is something I am not very good of. I have so much in my mind and want to do everything at once. But I try to go for walks every day to relax. Instead of my camera, I bring my new binoculars with me. I got myself some cool ones for Christmas (US click here – German click here for the ones I bought). So why I am telling you this? Because I felt the need sometimes to bring my camera to my walks, to capture deers, swans and other wildlife scenes. The binoculars are a great substitute for that. They will calm you down, because you can not use them to take pictures. I use them to watch wildlife and enjoy it a lot.
Watching these sparrows is so much fun
My new year resolutions for 2023
Don’t seek for perfect wet plate portraits all the time, accept the one you did and appreciate it. Look for more assignments that you enjoy and less that you don’t. Work more on your own projects you love.
this is one of my very first wet plates. that was about 8+ years ago.
How to load analog film into a Sony A7 digital camera?
Let’s end this post with something fun. I asked chatGPT some questions about wet plate and analog photography. And at the end, chatGPT ended up explaining me how to load film into a Sony A7 camera and why medium format film would not fit in. And no worries, the sensor cleaning and the ibis of the Sony A7 will not destroy your film either. And if you ever looked for a film rewind button on your digital camera, chat GPT got you covered. In that case chatGPT acts like a little child that made a mistake and makes up more facts to cover it. Please be aware that all other answers about the wet plate process and so on contains also false information (I won’t explain everything, but for insiders it’s fun to read). As always, if you are interested in that process, take a workshop or read a book (chatGPT tells you the same). Enjoy the answers guys (You need to open some screenshots in a new browser tab to be able to read them):
I’ve known Denis for a few years now and over time a nice friendship has developed. We met for the first time during the Camera Obscura Festival in Germany, but we were in contact several times before that.
From Denis I bought my current large format camera and some lenses. Also one of my more important lenses – the Dallmeyer 3b which I use a lot for this series is from Denis. Read more in this post https://blog.markus-hofstaetter.at/2021/03/inspired/
His knowledge of historical equipment is fascinating. His craftsmanship and restoration skills are also second to none. Check out his website here www.wetplatedreams.com. Denis keeps historic history alive with his work.
I also captured a portrait with Denis and his Wife Sybille that I like a lot.
Denis Krieg of wetplatedreams.comDenis with his wife Sybille
Maybe you missed my exhibition, or you want to come for a portrait or a workshop. Then you have now a chance to walk with me in a brief overview through my studio.
It all started when we needed to scan some slides. With my Screen Cezanne 5000 scanner I would get an amazing quality, but it would be exhausting to do. I have an old Epson scanner that could do it, but it’s also not a very comfortable task. So I had an eye on a Agfa Duoscan Hid scanner. These scanners scan film without the need of a glass. That makes things much easier. They are also great flatbed scanners. With that I take more care about my valuable Screen scanner. The lamps of it are not longer available, when they break its over. But as always it was more difficult to get this scanner up an running than I thought. It needed lots of cleaning and my first idea about a fitting computer was also not my best one.
The Scenic Mobile 800 was ahead of its time back then, but now to slow to work as a scan server.Overhead projectors are obsolete since a long time, but back then it was amazing what that laptop could do.Scanning without the need of glas – a great benefit of this scanner.The scanner was very dirty and in the need of many cleanings. I cleaned it 4 times until it worked as expected. Whenever you open the scanner, you must be very careful. First of all disconnect power and SCSI. The Manual mentions also high voltage inside the scanner, I guess they’re mean capacitors or something like that. I already tried to clean the “bottom scanner” that takes care of the film scanning. I could barley see it with a little mirror, but not reach it. And dismounting the main scan unit was way too risky. I think I would never get the scanner calibrated again.I was very happy for the SilverFast support. I had some issues, that were very specific to my configuration. Also the software is great for scanning film. Check out their website here : https://www.silverfast.comThis scan of one of my moste favourite portraits (Phoebe) was done with the Screen Cezanne and is very similar to the Agfa, see the video for more details
My good old Century No.2 camera has about 100 years behind her. She still works great, but her bellow is leaking light. Thats why I needed to repair it. I thought it is easiest to explain everything in a video, so it is easier to understand for you guys and hopefully also helpful. It took me a long time to put everything together. Why? Because it was important for me to reuse as many original parts as possible to preserve the history of this camera. I think this is a very important part when you consider to renovate a piece of history! Underneath the video are all links for the parts I needed.
