Author Archive
Tuesday, January 18th, 2022
My Strobe gear with a Canon/Rollei/Westcott surprise
Often people ask me what strobes I use. Thats the reason of todays video. From digital to wet plate, I covered everything. But there is also a little surprise, that might be new for a lot of people. It’s about using the Canon ST-E3-RT remote with Rollei HS Freeze 2s, Westcott FJ200 and Jinbei Strobe. All details in the video and bellow. Find links to all the gear I use here: list.mhaustria.com
Please check the chapters in the timeline to jump to the part that is interesting for you.
By accident I figured out that the Rollei HS Freeze 2s and probably the Wetscott FJ200 / Jinbei HD-200 can be controlled with the original Canon ST-E3-RT remote trigger. All these brands have the same looking remote trigger (Westcott FJ-X2m, Jinbei TR-Q7II, Rollei Profi Funksender Mark II) that is advertised to work with Canon, Funji, Nikon, Olympus and any more. The Rollei I have really works well and if you work with different Camera brands, that is a wonderful solution. But after I switched the strobe to RT, I figured, it can be triggered and controlled with the Canon remote. So I called Rollei (they have an excellent service here in Europe) and asked them why I should use their remote to trigger the Rollei strobe and my Canon speedlites, when my Canon remote can do the same. They were surprised noted the remote I use and happily took their remote back. I can use even the integrated master function of the Canon speed lite 600EXRT to trigger the Rollei strobe.
There are some advantages of the original trigger: The original trigger has the advantages to reduce the strobe power for one more stop, turn beep on and off, turn modelling light on and off and enable freeze mode. But that is nothing I need to do in the field.
I tested everything only with the Rollei strobe, but I think there is a big chance, that this will also work with the other brands as well.
Strobes in this video: Canon Speedlite 600EX II RT, Canon Speedlite 430EX III-RT Flash, Canon Speedlite ST-E3-RT Speedlite Transmitter, Westcott FJ200, Rollei HS Freeze 2s, Hensel Expert D 250 Speed, Hensel Integra 1000 plus, Hensel Tria 3000AS Generator, Hensel EH Pro 3000 head, Hensel Tria 6000S Generator, Hensel EH Pro 6000 head
Wednesday, December 22nd, 2021
3D Printing for (analog) Photographers – Artillery Sidewinder X2 faild edition
Because I got asked a lot about 3D printing, I did this short introduction into it, or like I call it: let the fails continue.
It’s about the Artillery Sidewinder X2 and some broken parts. Very different to all these unboxing where everything works out of the box. I will show you also why a 3D printer can be very cool for photographers. Here you can find all tools I use for wet plate, 3D printing and filming: http://list.mhaustria.com
Tuesday, December 14th, 2021
Never give up – a 300mm Zeiss Tessar project with lots of fails
In todays video I documented my fails (wood working and 3d printing with sidewinder x1 – also building plate change of the sidewinder x1) while I tried to mount my new lens on my camera. I got this lens, because I do more and more wet plate family portraits and for that I wanted a sharp affordable lens. Normally I would show you guys how I did a family wet plate portrait(its online now, scroll down for the second part). But I couldn’t do it, because of our lockdowns. So I worked on a self portrait. To make this easier, I turned my studio into a darkroom, so I can move without getting a ghosty image on the plate. Because I put metal sheets into the ceiling during my studio renovation, I could mount the red light easily with magnets. To see the whole story, watch the video 🙂
First Part
Second Part
To find all the tools I used, check list.mhaustria.com
Wednesday, November 10th, 2021
Visiting Leica and Silvergrain Classics in Germany + Portra 400 c-41 developing included
In todays video I travel to Germany to prepare my Silvergrain Academy MasterClass wet plate workshop (click here for the workshop). I did also an Interview for the Silvergrain Classics, visited the Leica Headquarters and documented development of my Portra 400 film in the Silvergrain Classics lab.
Tuesday, November 2nd, 2021
Changing my camera gear – iPhone 13 Pro Max – DJI OM 5 vs Hohem iSteady V2
Filming with my Canon 5D mkIV and my M50 is sometimes pretty complicated. When I shoot wet plates, I do most of my videos by myself. Doing wet plate alone is a intensive task sometimes, combining it with capturing myself during the process can be challenging. Thats why I was looking for an easier solution. I wanted to have camera that shoots 120 or 240 fps in combination with a good autofocus for normal footage. First I thought of the wonderful Canon EOS R5. But to be honest, this wouldn’t make my life much easier. So I went for an iPhone 13 pro max in combination with the DJI OM 4 gimbal. the iPhone kills my Canon EOS M50 in low light video mode (when I use it in my darkroom with red light). It is amazing how far tech has come that days. What else I use and why the Hohem iSteady V2 is not for me, but could be the better solution for you can you find in this video. Scroll down for all the links to the tools I use, or visit list.mhaustria.com for more wet plate related tools
Affiliate links – support also your local stores
iPhone 13 Pro max International: https://amzn.to/3vp5GIm Germany: https://amzn.to/30C9Tgo
SumUp ATM https://amzn.to/3EuceIU
DJI OM 5 Gimbal: https://amzn.to/2ZFO2UV
Hohem isteady v2 International: https://amzn.to/2ZEL96t Deutschland: https://amzn.to/3msI96n
Rode wirless go II https://amzn.to/2Y2uV71
Rode Lavalier Go https://amzn.to/3pX5Wxk
Rode Video Mic Me-L International: https://amzn.to/3CvPnfm Deutschland: https://amzn.to/3GBKpQI
ULANZI VL49 RGB Video Lights https://amzn.to/3nMEm38
Ulanzi MT-16 Camera Tripod with cold shoe https://amzn.to/3pTZc3w
Spigen Tough Amor kickstand case https://amzn.to/3Gx1aN3
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
Tuesday, August 24th, 2021
How to remove Scratches from Tintypes varnished with Sandarac
There is nothing more annoying as scratches in your sandarac varnish. In todays video I show you how to make many of the go away. For that you let the varnished plate breath alcohol in a closed container . after about 15 minutes (you will smell it), the varnish will get sticky again and because of that small scratches will disappear. After you are happy with the result, you heat the plate to cure the varnish again. always cover the plate as good as possible with a tray or something else, to avoid dust on it. See the full explanation in my video
Affiliate links to used products
- tray warmer (I use it also for varnishing): https://amzn.to/3j8LRQX
- a cheaper alternative to warm plates:International: https://amzn.to/3grsgd2 Germany: https://amzn.to/3yf9YSA
- similar cake container (mine is no longer available): International: https://amzn.to/3gq0i18 Germany https://amzn.to/3gqyE4m
- 96% alcohol: International: https://amzn.to/3D9YYJv Germany: https://amzn.to/3zcbh5z
- trays I use: International: https://amzn.to/38mOJnf Germany: https://amzn.to/3B5ZV3P
- Get yourself a beautiful print here: http://prints.mhaustria.com
- Looking for wet plate gear? http://gear.mhaustria.com
- Buy me a tea: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mhaustria
- Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mhaustria
- Get cool analog shirts here shirts.mhaustria.com
- For online wet plate workshops, visit this http://online.mhaustria.com
- For private wetplate workshops (Nassplattenworkshop contact me here: http://www.markus-hofstaetter.at/pages/kontakt/ (German and English available)
- Get the latest news with my newsletter here: https://blog.markus-hofstaetter.at/newsletter-2/
Thursday, August 19th, 2021
News: Amazing Steve McCurry Exhibition and a Waterhouse Stop Database
In this video I show you guys an exhibition that is a must see when you are in Austria. I am talking about the Steve McCurry exhibition in Graz www.stevemccurrygraz.com. This is one of the most amazing experiences I had in an exhibition like that. Huge (up to 4x6Meters and 133 of them) portraits of Steve McCurry that are all backlit. These backlit portraits are the only light source in the room. Just some more numbers so you guys get a better idea: 1100m2 portraits in a 2200m2 room! This just looks amazing. Find more details and see some great drone footage from the exhibition in my video.
Mr. McCurry’s work inspired me many years ago and that was the reason why I started with portrait photography. He gave an artist talk in Graz and afterwards he signed books and spent some time with everybody. He is such a nice and friendly human beeing.
As you can imagine, for me it was very cool to see him in person for the first time. And I couldn’t resist to take a selfie with him 🙂
At this point also a big thanks to www.atelierjungwirth.com for bringing such an amazing exhibition and the artist talk to life and letting me use the drone video.
And there are more great news: If somebody of you guys are missing Waterhouse stops, then I am here to help. I created a Waterhouse stop database that can help lots of people http://waterhousestops.mhaustria.com. To make this happen, it would be great if anybody who has existing Waterhouse stops would scan them, measure them and upload all the information. I will bring everything in a usable format and publish it on the website. So if someone is looking for a Waterhousstop, he can go there, print the stops on cardboard and use them. Or if you want to have them 3d printed, just contact me here https://www.markus-hofstaetter.at/pages/kontakt/
Thanks to Christian Klant for coming up with the idea. Now enjoy the video guys!
Get yourself a beautiful print here: http://prints.mhaustria.com
Looking for wet plate gear? http://gear.mhaustria.com
Buy me a tea: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mhaustria
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mhaustria
Get cool analog shirts here shirts.mhaustria.com
For online wet plate workshops, visit this http://online.mhaustria.com
For private wetplate workshops (Nassplattenworkshop contact me here: http://www.markus-hofstaetter.at/pages/kontakt/ (German and English available)
Get the latest news with my newsletter here: https://blog.markus-hofstaetter.at/newsletter-2/