Shooting a HDR tintype with a super fast lens (and get them on Ebay)

When shooting wet plates, you deal with a very light insensitive process (about iso 0.5). So most wet plate artists wants to get their hand on a fast lens. Wolfgang, a former participant of my wet plate workshop got his hand on a very fast lens and sent it over to me. For the first time, you can get the plates from this project on eBay, starting from 1 Euro – http://ebay.mhaustria.com

tintype portrait of Wolfgang — Wolfgang, an Austrian based photographer who made this video possible – thanks a lot!

This Delta HD-6C ML lens is pretty huge and was used in vintage HD protectors many years ago. If you want to know more about this kind of lenses, check this blog post: blog.markus-hofstaetter.at/2023/03/shooting-an-ultra-fast-lens-140mm-f1-with-an-ultra-large-format-camera/

Here you can see how big this monster (a Delta HD-6C ml) is compared to a 35mm film canister. At the bottom you can see my self designed lens mount that I printed. A “very professional” 😉 solution.

A professional lens mount needs a “professional” lens support. For that I used plate holders and other stuff that was laying around in my studio. I looks a little bit like a Frankenstein monster build. But it grew on my and I like it that way.

The dreamy outcome with this wonderful bokeh makes it to my new Bokeh Monster

See the full transformation in my video

The yellow part of the flower absorbs a lot of UV light and thats the reason it appears dark when I exposed the plate normally. Thats why I did this series of 4 different exposures. I think every single one of them has something special in it. Just for fun, I created a digital HDR image out of them