Archive for September, 2021
Thursday, September 30th, 2021
Wet Plate Portraits at the Salzburger Freilichtmuseum
In todays video I show you some impressions of my on location wet plate shooting in Salzburg at the Salburher Freilichtmuseum. We had so much fun – it was great!
Thanks for the photos to: https://instagram.com/arturmughrabi https://instagram.com/bilder_schmiede https://instagram.com/drea.koch https://www.facebook.com/dachsteindesign
Wednesday, September 22nd, 2021
a 170 year old process and high end food photography
everybody knows that I work exclusively on collodion wet plate portraits. So what’s the reason for food photography now? Let me try to explain. Many of you guys will remember that I bought a Cambo studio stand some while ago (https://blog.markus-hofstaetter.at/2021/02/my-new-150kg-studio-stand-that-is-from-1957-cambo-ast/ ). A little bit later I bought a used tray for it on Ebay. The seller was very friendly and somehow we started to talk about photography. Long story short, a month later we decided to do a project together. After months of planing, Hans Gerlach (a well known food photographer and columnist) drove over to my studio and brought his tools and some delicious food with him. Additional food for this shooting came from my garden, this way I could bring a bit more into the project besides my wet plate photography. During the planing period we discussed different dishes, their colours and how they would appear on a tintype (the wet collodion process only sees blue light and therefore red colours will turn black and blue white). We saw this come together as kind of a first test and wanted to see what what we could create. For me it was very interesting to have a chef working in my kitchen.
I suggested the 13x18cm format, because the camera is not too huge and can be easy mounted over head. We can get a bit more depth of field because of this smaller format. And I have a beautiful 250mm Zeiss Tessar lens that I can stop down to about F16 without having to long exposure times (two Hensel generators with 9000 w/s together helped to archive that and remember, its called wet plate, because the plate needs to be wet the whole time and can not dry). I mounted this beauty of a lens on my 13x18cm Mentor camera (check this article for my renovation of the beauty: https://blog.markus-hofstaetter.at/2021/08/shooting-wet-plate-portraits-with-an-affordable-large-format-bokeh-monster/ )
Even this studio Mentor camera and the tripod are meant for that kind of work, it felt funny to see my tools in that position.
While I prepared everything in my darkroom, Hans Gerlach did his magic in my kitchen. We were very excited to work on the first plate. And after we saw the result, we were even more excited, the outcome was gorgeous. So we worked very long on the first day (I think I went to bed at 4 am). But it was not all glory. We shot so many plates, that at some point my silver nitrate bath went bad. First I thought it was the collodion, the fixer and the developer, but after I changed all of that(I am always good prepared for important shootings and create everything twice or even three times) and still got funny looking plates, I know I need to change the silver nitrate bath.
After I changed the bath, everything was fine again and we could go on with the shooting.
We shot many different styles of the sourdough bread until we were happy with the outcome. This is one of our favourites plates. To hold it in our hands after months of planing and all the work we put together was wonderful. If you are interested in a print of this plate or any other, check out this link: prints.mhaustria.com
But this little setback should not be the only thing that kept me busy this day. After shooting many plates, my modified wet plate holder made my life a bit harder. Sometimes the plate won’t stay in place and the end result of that was a scratched plate….
I quickly solved the problem with a little redesign on the plate holder and from that on I was able to shoot without any problem. Before capturing every new dish, we were excited to see how it will turn out.
And most of them turned out great, I really like the beans and the spoon with chocolate mousse. The sheer amount of detail and texture of these scans from the wet plates are just incredible. They will look amazing on a big print.
To get as much done as possible, I scanned all 13x18cm (about 200mpix) and 18x24cm (about 300mpix, I decided later to do two bigger plates too) plates at night and also varnish them afterwards. So this night was quite short 🙂
I shot the bigger plates with a 150 year old Dallmeyer 2b Petzval lens to mix the this delicious bread with the beautiful swirly bokeh from this old lens. I really like how this plate turned out and how the out of focus areas look like.
After these intense shoots, we were always rewarded with great looking plates amazing tasting food.
Hans created also amazing tasting handmade pasta
To give you guys a much better idea of this shooting, I tried to captures as much footage as possible to bring you behind the scenes with this video
On thing is sure, we enjoyed our work together a lot and will do more like that in the future, but that needs again lots of planning. I am very happy that I met Hans and his work inspired me (yes there is also a inspired portrait coming up). I really look forward to our next shooting together (and yes, I also look forward to eat everything 🙂
Because I get asked very often about the tools I use for the wet plate process, I created a shopping list here: list.mhaustria.com
Tuesday, September 7th, 2021
Mobile Darkroom: Advanced Eskimo Quickfish 3 modification
I did a darkroom tent review some time ago and I still like that one, but after using a quickfish3 at the camera obscura festival I fell in love with it, because it’s much easier to setup. I also enjoy the extra space I got in this tent.
Maybe some of you may ask why I do a video about it. Let me explain: I talked with others how they modified their tent to make it light tight and got lots of great feedback. But I wanted to go for a more final solution, so I started digging. Lots of people use normal acrylic spray to close the little holes in the tent. Others use paint made for rims. To cover the zipper, people use a black reflector or a big towel to cover it. But this things are always in my way and I have to take them with me. After talking with professionals I figured that screen painting ink should be a final solution to cover holes, because it is designed to grab onto the structure of a fabric. A call with https://www.siebdruckladen.de was super helpful and brought me the final solution – thanks a lot for that. For the zippers, my girlfriend had the idea to get some kind of zipper cover, like you have it on your jeans. For that I went to a shop that sells tons of different fabric (https://textil-mueller.at) and got some stiff one. First I was thinking to sew it somehow to the tent, but then I went for glueing. There is so much different glue for fabric out there, most of must be ironed and that was something I did not like to do on my tent. So I called https://www.henkel.at and asked what glue would be the best. They forwarded my question to a technician. He called me back and explained in detail what to use and how I should use it. What a great support, thanks a lot guys! There is no sponsored content here, I just show you guys what worked well, so you guys don’t have to figure it out by yourself. Find all the links on the bottom of the post.
Check the video for a more detailed explanation how I did everything.
Affiliate Links
my old growtent lighthouse max
My used one: http://gear.mhaustria.com
On Amazon de: https://amzn.to/3DObCOJ
Eskimo Quickfish 3
https://amzn.to/3tgLya0
I ordered mine here they ship to Europe: http://www.moreoutdoor4u.com
Peelable paint Abziehlack
Similar Version worldwide: https://amzn.to/3DOWm4f
Germany: https://amzn.to/3h5OpxY
Screenprinting Paint – Siebdruckfarbe
Shop in Germany:
https://www.siebdruckladen.de/Aqua-tex-Schwarz.html
https://www.siebdruckladen.de/Cold-Fix.html
If you can’t order there, get similar items here:
Amazon international: https://amzn.to/3BPwMub
Amazon.de: https://amzn.to/3yM4dvB
Glue for the zip covers:
International: https://amzn.to/3h688gR or https://amzn.to/3yKXli1
Germany: https://amzn.to/38IerCD
I would not suggest to buy the fabric onlien, go to a local store and look for a stiff one.
Pondliner – Teichfolie for the windows and the bottom of the tent
International: https://amzn.to/3DOg4gp – https://amzn.to/3BMdcPu – this should be big enough for the tent and the windows.
Germany: https://amzn.to/3zSfyvE this should be big enough for the tent and the windows
Lee color filter 106 primary red – Red color gel – Rote Farbfolie
International: https://amzn.to/38GktDX
Germany https://amzn.to/3jNtAsQ
Don’t get a cheap one, you will regret it.
Velcro – Klettverschluß for the windows – calculate for 8 windows
International: https://amzn.to/3n4BShZ
Germany:https://amzn.to/3yN71ZA
small foldable table – mine is made of wood and I can not recommend it anymore, thats the one I will get after mine is totally gone
International: https://amzn.to/3n7Lo3G
Germany: https://amzn.to/3h7fksV
Water canister with
International: https://amzn.to/38HusJd
Germany: https://amzn.to/3kXwg6z
I will get a foldable version soon too:
https://amzn.to/3n7f2WX
Rugged Erxplorer or pelican cases
International: https://amzn.to/38K75yI
Germany: https://amzn.to/3jMWZmP
Traveling Tanks:
https://www.lerouge-camera.fr/en/shop/dip-tanks-for-wet-plate-collodion-process/
Coleman Extreme cooler – choose the size you like
International: https://amzn.to/38KGQIk
Germany: https://amzn.to/3kVHM25
Lifetime Table 60kg:
International: https://amzn.to/3n8lTQ2
Germany: https://amzn.to/3h3KLog
The more rugged version:
https://amzn.to/2YxyIck
Jiga wireless powerbank:
International: https://amzn.to/3DR5Dsl
Germany: https://amzn.to/3n3gJER
Led strips with remote and blutooth control:
International: https://amzn.to/3h8WPo5 or https://amzn.to/2WZwdyT
Germany: https://amzn.to/3BOrm2f
Clips to mount the led strip on the tent:
International: https://amzn.to/3h6sK8I
Germany: https://amzn.to/3DJKyQC