Author Archive
Monday, March 27th, 2023
Sad News, DPReview is closing its doors
Amazon is closing dpreview.com, I never thought such a standard in this industry will be gone in a few days. I put my thoughts in a video. This is frustrating for me, because such a great source of information soon is no more
Thursday, January 26th, 2023
Photograph of the year
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
Wednesday, July 27th, 2022
Darkroom Home Automations
Even I am an analog guy, I am not shy to bring new technologies to my darkroom. With the wet collodion process I always try to avoid touching anything unnecessarily. So I build some home automations to assist me with that. Every analog photographer knows the struggle. You work in your darkroom and in this very moment you don’t want to be disturbed. Just imagine, somebody opening the door and your film/paper/plate is exposed to light. For sure, you just can mount a red light on the entrance door and you are safe. But in my case (and I am pretty sure I am not the only one), I have a main entrance to the darkroom and two other doors. One door leads to my studio and the other door to my pouring room. That means if any of these doors are open, it is safe to enter the darkroom. If I just would have a red light on the main entrance door, it would be hard to understand for my workshop participants or sitters if it is safe to enter. Thats the reason I build a solution for that with Apple Homekit (you for sure can build it also with Google/Alex or anything else). But there is more. We all have running water in our Darkrooms. And I think some people will have a water detector. But what if you have to wash something with running water and are not in your darkroom all the time? I used Homekit for that as well. I show you also a solution for measuring time without touching anything. This may be very specific to the wet collodion process, but maybe it may be helpful for others as well. The last topic is about how I feel more safe with my 3D printer.
I looked also for Google/Alexa devices, but most of them are working with wifi instead of low power bluetooth or thread. So I am not sure if I want to recommend any of these, please let me know which ones work great and I post them here.
Works with Homekit: Eve Energy power switch
International https://amzn.to/3BfCqIH Germany: https://amzn.to/3cEAH5s
Eve Door sensor
International https://amzn.to/3J3MV3S Germany: https://amzn.to/3b4PiXu
Eve Waterguard
Inernational: https://amzn.to/3Pxnn1n Germany: https://amzn.to/3POEJHv
Eve smoke is not available right now, I found only this alternative from Netatmo
https://amzn.to/3Ou6T8Z
Works with Homekit and Google/Alexa
Philips Hue lightstrip
International: https://amzn.to/3J7jnlR Germany https://amzn.to/3cGmZzd
Philips Hue Bridge
International: https://amzn.to/3z6bYP9 Germany: https://amzn.to/3cxRdEl
Philips hue switch
International https://amzn.to/3b1NGxY Germany: https://amzn.to/3Ox1kGX
Apple Watch app https://apps.apple.com/de/app/click-metronome/id705075264
Water resistant JBL BT Speaker (new version
International: https://amzn.to/3Be74Cj Germany: https://amzn.to/3J4DKjA
Wednesday, June 29th, 2022
Great Exhibitions in Austria with my Portraits and more
I am very exited about these exhibitions! In the first exhibition, at the beautiful Ottenstein Castle are presented 5 pieces of my work. This place is amazing! The exhibition in Persenbeug shows 10 huge pieces of my work directly at the Danube – the exhibition is called Kopf Herz Hand (Head Heart Hand) and is about passionate artists. The Festival La Gacilly in Baden is also a must see. With 7km length and about 1500 images it is amazing. I had my Work there shown the last three years, but did not make it this year.
Wednesday, May 4th, 2022
Building a Wet Plate Frankenstein Camera and Capture a Ghost
Corrine of www.corrinewestmedia.co.uk booked a wet plate workshop before the pandemic started. Two years later we were finally able to do it. The main subject was to get comfortable with the wet collodion process and to create images similar to the ones of spirit photographer William H. Mumler. Mr. Mumler created images (probably double exposures) where his clients could take a picture with their deceased relatives. The photograph of Mary Todd Lincoln with the “ghost” of her husband (Abraham Lincoln) was his most famous one. Corrine found my double exposure wet plates and that was the reason she contacted me in the first place. About two months before the workshop Corrine surprised me with a question: “Can we build a wet plate camera together?”. I talked with a friend and after a long visit at a DIY market I was sure that we can do it. A DIY Camera and capturing ghosts, that sounds like a fun workshop for me 🙂
I could not capture everything in the video, because I was focused to deliver a great workshop experience. So let me explain a bit here. I build a diy camera kit so to say. But I did not want to build everything. It was important for me that we put the major parts together in person, to really create a camera and an understanding how a camera works.
It took me a long time to figure everything out, I wanted to create a diy camera, that is adaptable and upgradeable without any special parts. It also should be able to shoot portraits and landscape and if something breaks, just go to your diy marked and get a replacement part. The only thing needed is my self designed camera back. I wanted to invent/adapt something that you can get in the market, but I was without luck finding such a part. The 3D printed design took many hours and a lot of filament to work as expected.
For the lens I went for a 150mm Leitz Dimaron (F2.8), Elmaron (F2.8) or Hektor (F2.5). These lenses have three things in common. 150mm is kind of a “normal” lens for the 4×5 large format and they all have the same diameter and not too expensive if you buy them online. All of them are pretty sharp as well as you could see in the video (this was a Dimaron)
The camera and lens support is build like this one in that posting: Camera and Lens support
For the Film/Plate holder I decided to go for the std international 4×5 holders. I had them water jet cut for a clean look and we modified it with silver wires, because these are more resistant against acid and fit into the silver nitrate workflow
We were super happy with our first result. The portrait looked awesome and the resolution of the lens is great. When you look closely at the video you will see, that we used two boxes for portrait distance.
https://blog.markus-hofstaetter.at/2019/12/ho-to-make-a-ground-glass-for-a-large-format-camera/
Here is a detail scan of Corrine’s eye – pretty impressive result of a 4×5 plate shot with a self made camera and a projection lens.
For the spirit photographs that are inspired by Mr. Mumler we wend for wet plate double exposures.
To make our live easier, we marked all positions with sticky tape on the ground.
We decided to use my Dallmeyer 3B Petzval lens for the first double exposure, because it fits better to the time when the original images were captured.
The second double exposure was a bit more modern, but also should get the ghost look. For that we used a Zeiss 300mm F4.5 Tessar lens. This lens is pretty new (about 2ß-30 years old) and is very crisp. I thought that makes more sense for this kind of image and also fits to the story (see caption of the image)
What a great 3 Day workshop that was. We created so many different portraits. (more in the gallery) and time flew so fast. At this point I want to say thanks again to Corrine for visiting my workshop and trusting me with the camera design. I looking forward to see what she will do for her PHD with the wet collodion process.
Thursday, June 10th, 2021
Congrats to Albin Ouschan World Pool Champion and World Number One
The title says it all. Congrats Albin!
I did this portrait series 8 years ago and it is still one of my favourite portraits of him.
Thursday, January 14th, 2021
Touchable Bokeh – 3D Printed Wet Plates
have you ever felt a photograph? I guess not, so maybe my latest project about 3D printed wet plates will change that.
These beautiful prints (litophane) took a pretty long time to finish. My printer was working on them for 17 hours per print to make them as beautiful as possible. And that does not include all the fails, the search for the right filament and to find the right settings. But I am so happy that it worked out. If you want to have one of these beautiful artworks for yourself, check out my Ebay store http://ebay.mhaustria.com or contact me directly here.
Visit also my analog store for shirts and other cool stuff: http://store.mhaustria.com
For private wetplate workshops contact me here: http://www.markus-hofstaetter.at/pages/kontakt/
Or book other ones here http://www.markus-hofstaetter.at/pages/workshops/
Fine Art Shop http://www.markus-hofstaetter.at/pages/front_store/
become a Patreon and support me: https://www.patreon.com/mhaustria
If you guys want to experience yourself how a tintype is made and own a one of a kind wet plate, please contact me via my website http://wetplate.art
Don’t forget to subscribe to my Newsletter: https://blog.markus-hofstaetter.at/Newsletter/
Saturday, August 22nd, 2020
Martin Bailey podcast interview
I was interviewed by Martin Bailey Photography to be part of his podcast about the United Art Gallery and my work. You can find the full episode here: https://mbp.ac/715
Very honored to be on his show.
Tuesday, December 3rd, 2019
Video Photo + Adventure 2019
Finally the video from the photo and Adventure.
Etwas verspätet das Video von der Photo + Adventure.
Im Video findet ihr Lois Lammerhuber, Pavel Kaplun, Lisa Bednarik, Fabio Antenore, Nadja Hluchovsky und viele mehr.
Fine Art Shop: http://www.markus-hofstaetter.at/pages/front_store/
Nächste workshops: http://www.markus-hofstaetter.at/pages/workshops/
Wollt ihr immer auf Letztstand sein, benutzt einfach meinen Newsletter ein Newsletter: https://blog.markus-hofstaetter.at/Newsletter/
Tuesday, October 8th, 2019
Traveling Tanks for Silvernitrate and Fixer review
click or scroll down for the English version
Viele von euch wissen, dass ich ungern Tanks für meine Nassplattenfotografie verwende. Da ich mehr mit meinen Kameras unterwegs bin, mußte ich mich jetzt doch wieder mit dem Thema beschäftigen und habe die perfekte Lösung hier gefunden: https://www.lerouge-camera.fr/en/wet-plate/
Ein komplettes Review von dem selbstgekauften Tanks findet ihr in meinem Video:
Fine Art Shop: http://www.markus-hofstaetter.at/pages/front_store/
Nächste workshops: http://www.markus-hofstaetter.at/pages/workshops/
Für individuelle Workshops kontaktiert mich hier http://www.markus-hofstaetter.at/pages/kontakt/
Wollt ihr selber eine Nassplatte samt Entstehung erleben – kontaktiert mich einfach http://wetplate.art
Wollt ihr immer auf Letztstand sein, benutzt einfach meinen Newsletter ein Newsletter: https://blog.markus-hofstaetter.at/Newsletter/
English version
A lot of you guys know that I don’t like to work with tanks. Because I had to shoot lots outside of my studio recently, I had to get back into this topic again and found tanks that are really great. Have a look at https://www.lerouge-camera.fr/en/wet-plate/ and find the ones I used. To get more information about the self bought tanks, watch my video.
Fine Art Shop http://www.markus-hofstaetter.at/pages/front_store/
Upcomming workshops: http://www.markus-hofstaetter.at/pages/workshops/
For individual workshops please contact me here: http://www.markus-hofstaetter.at/pages/kontakt/
If you guys want to experience yourself how a tintype is made and own a one of a kind wet plate, please contact me via my website http://wetplate.art
Don’t forget to subscribe to my Newsletter: https://blog.markus-hofstaetter.at/Newsletter/