Archive for the 'wetplate' Category
Wednesday, September 14th, 2022
A free wet plate/tintype?
Sounds crazy but it is possible, if you support me on Patreon (from the second tier), you will get early access to add free videos, live streams (shooting and discussing wet plates), support and troubleshooting and after a year a free one of a kind wet plate sent to you. Check my Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/mhaustria
Wednesday, September 7th, 2022
Freilichtmuseum Salzburg Wet Plate Experience (rainy days)
Wet plate in the rain? Sure thats why its called wet plate 🙂 We had a great time in Salzburg and it was a pleasure to be there again. It’s great to do portraiture in these wonderful old houses. You have to visit this museum when you are nearby. It is totally worth it. The best time would be when I shoot portraits there 😉
Tuesday, August 23rd, 2022
A Wet Plate Collodion Experience in Slovenia
I went to Slovenia to join Borut Peterlin’s Wet Plate Experience. It was great and I had finally some time to slow down and find myself again. There were so many nice people there. I am glad I met everyone of you. I hope to see you guys again next year. This video reflects how I felt there and how it slowed me down. In a second part I will show an analog portrait series and talk a bit more about my experience there. You will also find another Artist in the video who joined my inspired series – Let me introduce you to Lara Ješe – Lara Ješe is an artist who loves to express her inner worlds through animal shapes. Step into her menagerie anytime and bring some snacks for the horses..
Wednesday, July 20th, 2022
How To make Waterhouse Stops for antique lenses Part II
In todays video I show you guys how to make Waterhouse stop if you do not have any existing ones.
Support me on patreon http://patreon.mhaustria.com/
Visit my flipboard http://flip.mhaustria.com/
Waterhouse Stop Database: http://waterhousestops.mhaustria.com
Gerald’s video about aperture & f-stop https://youtu.be/OaSq0ES1ArE
Website about measuring waterhouse stops: https://apenasimagens.com/en/measuring-lens-aperture/
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, June 1st, 2022
Exhibition invitation and more
Exciting news, a wonderful exhibition is coming up where a lot of my wet plates are shown in a big format. The Exhibition is called “Kopf, Herz, Hand” that translates to “Head, Heart, Hand” and shows artist that put passion and craftsmanship into their work. The Vernissage is on the 17th of June at 5pm at the Rathausplatz in 3680 Persenbeug. It also includes a guided tour through all artworks. I would be super happy if I meet you guys there.
Beside that I also talk about what are the benefits to support me as a patron http://patron.mhaustria.com , what I am working on for my upcoming videos and why you should follow me on Flipboard http://flip.mhaustria.com
Wednesday, May 18th, 2022
Inspired Series – Henrik Brahe and Gerhad Sokol
My inspired series is going on slowly, but for sure I captured wonderful people on metal plates. First you see Henrik Brahe. An archaeologist and photographer from Portugal. He brought me a wonderful book of his work. Find out more about him at http://henrikbrahe.com He visited with his beautiful wife Sanne. I could not resist to capture them together as well.
Gerhard Sokol is a well know photographer who captured history with his work. But after all these years in photography, he did not stop there, he went on to work with lots of different techniques. He also published a book recently that tis worth to buy. you can find his work and book on https://www.bilderges.at
More information about the Book (with beautiful prints and stories) and the Inspired Series: http://inspired.mhaustria.com
Thursday, May 12th, 2022
Growing Together – World Wet Plate Day 2022
I decided to participate this year for the world wet plate day. I discussed it with my girlfriend and she was the one who came up with the idea. First we thought to make it in one shot, but I couldn’t wrap the outcome into my mind because of the limited depth of field. So I came up with the double exposure solution. I was pretty happy with the outcome, but thought I could improve it a bit -> that was not my best idea (happy I did a scan before that). As you can see in the video, I got also unlucky with the varnish. So I am working right now on that to fix it. I will write about my result here on ma Patron page, you can support me and join here: Become a Patron!
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.
Tuesday, March 8th, 2022
Varnishing Wet Plates with Lukas Varnish
At an external event I had once the issue, that I could not get rid of the dust on the varnish. So I worked out this solution with Stefan Schubert. You can find the links to all tools here: list.mhaustria.com