Archive for the 'Hensel' Category
Wednesday, January 26th, 2022
Private Collodion Wet Plate Workshop
This year private wet plate workshops are popular. That’s the reason I show you the first one of 2022. It was great to work with Ronald https://www.instagram.com/mrronho/ the cool thing is, I got some great portraits as well. Thanks so much for coming to my studio!
List to all tools I use: list.mhaustria.com
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
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
Tuesday, October 26th, 2021
Wet Plate Talk and on location shooting at Fomo Graz
Fomo Graz stands for Fotomonat Graz and translates to month of photography in Graz. The Fomo team invited me to do a talk and also shoot collodion wet plate portraits on location there. Thanks a lot for the invite it was such a great event and also thanks a lot to https://www.atelierjungwirth.com for letting me use your location to work on my portraits there. We had a blast, so many interested people during my talk. I really enjoyed explaining my favourite process to you guys. Also the wet plate portrait shoot was great, so many people wanted their portrait done. I think I shot 22 portraits on that day. Check out the video underneath for more impressions from this event. You an enjoy the video on a 4K screen with HDR support!
Check out these instagram pages from the people in the video: Fomo Graz , Ana, Luke, Julia
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
Wednesday, March 24th, 2021
Inspired – Jennifer
I know Jennifer now for many years. She was the legal guardian of her brothers since a very young age. As long as I know her, she always was a a very happy and positive person. 12 years later, they are all successful in their jobs and grew to wonderful human beings. That’s why she is so inspiring to me. When I remember myself in her age, I was just a jung man who wanted to have fun and not much responsibilities. But she even enjoyed it to be there for her younger brothers from the beginning.
I wanted to capture her happiness in one portrait. With the wet collodion process, that is not an easy task, so I had to be a bit sneaky during the shoot. I pre focused and put the plate holder into the camera. Turned the strobe power up to prepare myself for a short exposure and had a normal conversation with her to “prepare” her for the portrait, but I didn’t tell her that I will do a quick exposure by hand as soon as she smiled. So we had our conversation and as always Jennifer was in a great mood and so I rushed the lens cap off and fired the strobe without telling her whats going on. And with that I go the expression everybody sees so often on her.
This is just the beginning of the project. You can find already much more amazing people on inspired.mhaustria.com
get cool analog shirts here shirts.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/
Don’t forget to subscribe to my Newsletter: http://blog.markus-hofstaetter.at/Newsletter/
Tuesday, March 16th, 2021
Inspired
Today I want to inspire you with amazing people in front and behind my camera with my new collodion wet plate portrait project “inspired”. This project will be published in a book, register here to get the latest news about it inspired.mhaustria.com.
It all started with a Dallmeyer 3B Petzval lens, my dream lens that finally found the way to me. Denis of wetplatedreams.com found it for me. The condition is amazing. So is also the date from when it was made – it’s from 1876.
Denis is such a passionate person with a lot of knowledge when it comes to historic lenses and cameras.
And then there is Andreas – his passion is the building process of lens caps. It’s like he is meditating during the process of making one of his beauties. Unthinkable these days that somebody works 5+ hour on a lens cap, but he does. You can see in the video how beautiful one of his outcomes is.
There were also lots of other people involved who made my inspired portrait project possible. Like Mr. Dallmeyer or Mr. Petzval. More about these gentlemen in my video.
Now I want to talk about the people that were in front of my camera.
One of them is Michael White – a former Producer/Director/Author.
His historical documentary – Azorian The Raising of the K-129 has received international praise and has been shown by Networks in the US, Europe, Australasia, Asia.
Also his Book over the same story – Project Azorian the CIA and the Raising of the K-129 received positive critics in the US and worldwide.
He worked as special effects technician in his earlier career on many well known movies, like Superman the Movie, Flash Gordon, The Pink Panther, The Never Ending Story Enemy Mine, for name a few.
For more information on Michael White visit www.white.at.
Another person that inspires me with his work is the tattoo artist Manuel Soultan. His tattoos look like vivid three dimensional photographs. He designs every artwork by himself to create a one of a kind tattoo. You can check out his work on his website http://www.msctattoos.at or on his instagram: https://www.instagram.com/manuelsoultantattoos/
This is just the beginning of the project. You can find already much more amazing people on inspired.mhaustria.com
If you 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
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/
Don’t forget to subscribe to my Newsletter: http://blog.markus-hofstaetter.at/Newsletter/
Wednesday, February 3rd, 2021
wet plate / Nassplatten Workshop WIFI Salzburg
Today I want to share some impressions of my recent workshop at the WIFI training center in Salzburg. We could do that because of daily testing and wearing masks. I had a great time and met great new people. Thanks to the whole WIFI Salzburg Team for everything!
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/
Art: http://shop.mhaustria.com
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: http://blog.markus-hofstaetter.at/Newsletter/
Wednesday, January 27th, 2021
From Wet Plate to 3D Print – Touchable Bokeh part II (in color)
This time I did a full explanation of my whole process from a wet plate to a finished Lithophane 3D Print. I thought great 3D prints need a different approach, therefore I went outside and looked for subjects with lots of “texture”. At the end I came up with an overgrown “Nature’s Victory” branch and the skeletons of Japanese Lanterns that are a symbol for “Death Within Life”. You can can find the 3D and finer art prints in my shop: shop.mhaustria.com – you can also support me as a patron here patreon.mhaustria.com and get more inside infos about my project and also support for your wet plate process.
For the Lithophanes I went to the http://itslitho.com website. Sliced the Sprint in Ideamaker and used a Filament from https://www.extrudr.com/. As said in the video, I am not sponsored by anyone, I just want you guys to know what worked well for me.
The main differences in the slicer settings are, that I did not use any infill and filled everything up with shells. Outer shell speed is 20 and I used a brim with 20 loop lines. If you use Ideamaker, you can download the Profile here (it is for an Artillery Sidewinder X1 in combination with the bio fusion filament from Extrudr)
I didn’t show it in the video, but I did the scanning before varnishing the plates. I thought it might confuse people, if interrupt the analog process with the scanning.
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: http://blog.markus-hofstaetter.at/Newsletter/