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Archive for the 'diy' Category

Wednesday, September 6th, 2023

How to easy build a DIY UV Exposure Box with Dimmer and Timer

Lately I started with alternative printing techniques. Salt prints and als cyanotypes are something I want to learn more about. I did the first exposures with the sun and it turned out really well. But I couldn’t make always time during the day, beside that sometimes the sun moved to fast and I had the prints in the shade, or it even was to late for sun printing at all.

I got great results in the sun, but I just don’t have always time during the day

Thats when I looked at tutorials for UV exposure boxes. There are so many great tutorials with beautiful results everywhere. But all I found needed lots of time to build it and a dimmer and timer was not included in the ones I found. So I constructed one by myself, with as less as possible diy knowledge needed to build it. Even I am very confident with soldering and building stuff, I wanted to have a quick solution. Find the full tutorial in my latest video (Scroll down for the full material List)

I started with a 60x40x12cm Eurobox – you can use whatever box you need. Maybe even a nice wooden one.
With a utility knife I could easily cut through the box to make myself a door with a hinge. Thats a step you can easily skip. I only made it, so I can access the box, without lifting it up.
I used a little clamp and a piece of rope to hold the door in place when its opened.
To make the box more reflective, I used an aluminum tape. its easy to cut and easy to mount.
Now I mounted the led strips on the aluminum foil. Before that I drilled a hole for the cables in the box.
If you use the same sized box, be sure to always leave the same with as they led strip is between each lane. Don’t worry if you make a mistake, my led strips came easily off and I got them easily on again.
These are digital dimmers that have also a time included.
After you install the app, the dimmers connect automatically via bluetooth. They also group together as one single light. Now you can change the output power of the lights, or set two kind of timers. I like these a lot, because I can precisely write down the time I used and also write down the light intensity. Another cool thing is, that you can close the app and even if you set a timer before the dimmers will remember without a phone connection.
If you don’t want to use your phone, then you will like these. Simple on, off and dimmer function.
It may not be as symmetrical as some others, but it worked really well.
Thats the first print from a glass negative out of the UV box. I think it turned out pretty well.
One light strip should put out 36Watts of power. I measured only 2,2 Amperes. If I calculate that by 12 Volts I get 26.4 Watts. I already contacted the company who produces the strips, but didn’t hear back so far. I will let you know how this goes. I think the power supplies are a bit on the week side. But don’t worry to much about that, as you saw my print looked really well. I am just a curious person and wanted to know if they deliver what they stated on the packaging.
There you have it, a very easy diy UV box exposure unit build. Enjoy building it!

Here are the links to all parts I used:

Eurobox:

Germany: https://amzn.to/3PnJSs1

Aluminum Tape:

International: https://amzn.to/3sEPBAN
Germany: https://amzn.to/3PrQ7Lz

Power switch

International: https://amzn.to/45GeDOv
Germany https://amzn.to/3Z7IkFP or https://amzn.to/3RaIY3h

Power splitter

International: https://amzn.to/3RcfoL6
Germany https://amzn.to/3qZ2CVv or https://amzn.to/45WE66f

Analog Dimmer:

International: https://amzn.to/3Psig52
Germany:https://amzn.to/3P96eMw

Digital Dimmer:

International: https://amzn.to/45ZVmri
Germany: https://amzn.to/3r6JKDS

Led Strips

International: https://amzn.to/3r2LrlS (discription says 60 Watt!!!)
Germany: https://amzn.to/3LaeGKp

Brushes for salt print or cyanotype

International: https://amzn.to/48gLziD
Germany: https://amzn.to/44FsXFR

  • Get yourself a beautiful print here: http://prints.mhaustria.com

  • Find all the tools I use here : http://list.mhaustria.com

  • Looking for wet plate gear? http://gear.mhaustria.com

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  • Posted by Markus | Filed in cyanotype, darkroom, diy, salt print, uv box, uv exposure | 2 Comments »

     

    Wednesday, March 15th, 2023

    Testing 6 Types of Wet Plate Varnish

    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

  • Get yourself a beautiful print here: http://prints.mhaustria.com

  • Find all the tools I use here : http://list.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 http://shirts.mhaustria.com
  • Posted by Markus | Filed in ambrotype, collodion, diy, nassplatte, varnish, wetplate | Comment now »

     

    Wednesday, March 8th, 2023

    Shooting an ultra fast lens (140mm F1.0) with an ultra large format camera

    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 video about 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 0.067 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.

  • Get yourself a beautiful print here: http://prints.mhaustria.com

  • Find all the tools I use here : http://list.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 http://shirts.mhaustria.com
  •  

    Wednesday, December 14th, 2022

    Bringing a Cheap 24 Year Old High-End Scanner Back to Life – It’s mind blowing

    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.com
    This 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

  • Get yourself a beautiful print here: http://prints.mhaustria.com

  • Find all the tools I use here : http://list.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 http://shirts.mhaustria.com
  • Posted by Markus | Filed in collodion, diy, Gear, scanning, wetplate | Comment now »

     

    Wednesday, December 7th, 2022

    Preserving History – Renovating a 100 Year Old Camera – Bellow Edition

    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.

    Bellowmaker: ecbuyonline@hotmail.com – email is the best way to communicate https://www.ebay.com/str/ecbuyonline2008
    Large Caliper International: https://amzn.to/3W7OvHt Germany: https://amzn.to/3VBaHJZ
    Liquid Rubber: International (similar) :https://amzn.to/3H4tfOq Germany: https://amzn.to/3Pf4b9D
    Glue for mounting the Bellow: International: https://amzn.to/3ixkdPI Germany: https://amzn.to/3F8YiWS
    Ifixit essential tools – they were very helpful: https://amzn.to/3UpEqnO
    machinist square International: https://amzn.to/3Vvly8j Germany https://amzn.to/3B8Kt9n
    Cutter https://amzn.to/3P1JsWl
    Screenprinting paint and cold fix: https://www.siebdruckladen.de
    Video for building a mobile darkroom: https://youtu.be/hnrtywCfQRk
    Video for sandarac varnish: https://youtu.be/wj2nPTYyFQ4

  • Get yourself a beautiful print here: http://prints.mhaustria.com

  • Find all the tools I use here : http://list.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 http://shirts.mhaustria.com
  • Posted by Markus | Filed in collodion, diy, dyi photography, tintype, video, wetplate | 6 Comments »