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 🙂
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
FomoGraz 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
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!
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 enjoyed it a lot to watch a chef doing his thing
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 I know the Cambo tripod and the Mentor camera is made for such operation, it still looks a bit scary
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.
A lot of troubleshooting was involved to make this go away
After I changed the bath, everything was fine again and we could go on with the shooting.
sourdough bread with butter and welsh onion
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….
this is something every wet plate artist have to face from time to time
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.
green beans with whipped goat cheese and fennel flowersThis will look great on a big canvasspoon with chocolate mousse grated chocolate
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.
sourdough bread with welsh onion and radishesIt amazes me again and again how sharp these old lenses are
After these intense shoots, we were always rewarded with great looking plates amazing tasting food.
I am still dreaming f that desert
Hans created also amazing tasting handmade pasta
culurgiones – sardinian ravioli with wild herbs
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
I did a darkroom tent reviewsome 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.
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
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
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
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 Grazwww.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 Klantfor coming up with the idea. Now enjoy the video guys!
Borut’s work is very inspiring, he works with so much passion on his beautiful artworks. His documentations on his Youtube Channel are artworks by themselves. No wonder he was on my list for the inspired project. And most people don’t know, he has Ninja reflexes too – he bought my 3B lens mid air when it was on its way down to the ground. Thanks a lot for that Borut! His blog: https://borutpeterlin.wordpress.com and YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCjjZ-Qc43dF7xHBC92MAuA
