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!
Growing Together 18x24cm collodion wet plate – Zeiss Tessar 300mmthis is how we positioned each other.
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.
the camera kit
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.
The first prototype of the camera back with an international film holder
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)
one lens mount, lots of options without breaking the bank
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
std 4×5 film holder modified for the wet collodion process
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.
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.
tape is always your friend for any photography project
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)
Profession – Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow An image about photography has changed
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.
Sometimes I ask myself, how do I get myself always into these enormous projects. Maybe this is how everything is supposed to be in my life. Or somebody putting these big pieces of work in front of my and tries to find out if I will ever give up. But thats where I a have to disappoint, I hardly give up on something. I was looking for a bigger Scanner for many years, because I wanted to be able to scan my ultra large format wet plates. In the video bellow you can watch my full story. Underneath the video I will go into some details. Find out at the bottom of that post how you can support me and my work to make this postings/videos possible.
Here are some details about the Screen Cezanne Scanner:
53x34cm (13.4″ x 20.9″) reflective & transparency scan surface
Yes, I could have just used the Power Mac (433mhz) that came with the Scanner and it would have been all over. But, then I had to use the use Firewire hdd, or USB 1 connections. Did anybody of you guys ever tried to copy large image files via usb 1.1? So USB 1.1 transfers with about 12 mbit, thats little under one megabyte a second. Believe me, you don’t won’t to copy many gigabytes over that connection. Other than that, the original Mac was pretty slow wit MacOs 9. All tools I describe here are listed here list.mhaustria.com
There cam a working Power Mac with the scanner – but it was pretty slow
Thats the reason I got a used Power Mac G4 Quicksilver with dual 1.2 ghz and 2gig (I said wrongly 4gb in the video) of ram. You can see in the video how cool it is and that it came with an Apple Cinema Display in its original packaging.
picking up the new (old) Mac at nightwhat a beauty
While I set everything up, I got a scary surprise over night, luckily nothing was damaged. More about that in the video.
lot of broken things, but nothing really broken
Even it was much faster, I needed to upgrade it with an USB 2 card (be sure to get one with a specific new chipset – (links to it at and everything else here list.mhaustria.com), an ssd, a Power Domain 2930 SCSI card (I got a sealed one, check it out in the video) and an PATA/SATA Adapter. This made the Mac really quick.
felt like a little kid with all this original sealed packaging
Long story short, cloning (with carbon copy cloner) everything on the ssd, did not bring any success. Because the old MacOS 9 would not run on the new Mac and the preinstalled Mac OS X would not support the SCSi controller. Thats why I installed http://macos9lives.com and MacOS X 10.3.2 Panther from the apple website. MacOS creates easily a multi boot when you install one OS after the previous one. To connect remotely with screen sharing form Mac OS X to Mac OS X you just have to enable the feature. For Mac OS9 install this one: https://www.macintoshrepository.org/155-vine-vnc-server-3-5-for-os9
you can use screen sharing on your Mac, but sometimes I had the feeling vnc is quicker
As you can se ein the video, coping files over 1gb ethernet connection is great. I can get about 60 Megabyte a second out of it. that is more than 60 times faster than usb 1.1
Now everything was setup and ready, I worked on a ultra large format wet plate. That was a great opportunity to see what the scanner can do. This is a 30x40cm collodion wet plate. Shot on an ultra large format camera with a Voigtländer Heliar Universal 360mm F 4.5 Lens
my 30x40cm ultra large format cameraThe portrait wet plate portrait session with Roman was great.
Now it is time for the first scans. The results are amazing. Just a little hint for reflective scans. Always try to use a black background, otherwise you get light bleeding into your image. The files this scanner produces are beautiful. There eis not much need of any post processing. That saves so much time. I love it.
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
My todays vlog is about the wet plate workshop in Germany. This time I take you with me behind the scenes. For upcoming wet plate / Nassplatten workshops (German and English) visit http://ws.mhaustria.com
I met Hans by accident when I bought a part for my tripod on Ebay. After some calls we decided to do a project together. Check the outcome of it here: https://blog.markus-hofstaetter.at/2021/09/a-170-year-old-process-and-high-end-food-photography/ When I worked with Hans Gerlach this project, his passion about cooking and setting up a scene on a plate inspired me. Every tiny little thing was placed carefully and at the end of every session I got to eat the most wonderful food you can imagine. In the first portrait he hold a pair of tweezers, a tool he used a lot during our work together.
I met Christian the first time during a Menschenbilder exhibition. He invited us to visit his atelier in Graz. It was a great experience to get a private tour through all these famous artworks of well known photographers. He organises lots of other exhibitions, one of them was the amazing Steve McCurry in Graz. Backlit portraits in an enormous size. Steve McCurry inspired me a lot and standing in front of these huge portraits made my eyes wet. You can find more about this exhibition here: https://blog.markus-hofstaetter.at/2021/08/news-amazing-steve-mccurry-exhibition-and-a-waterhouse-stop-database/ Christian is also an internationally popular commercial and magazine photographer. His work is stunning. Lots of people here in Austria know his famous chocolate covered portrait of Mr. Zotter of Zotter Chocolate
Wolfgang Mlakar
This Storie starts a little bit different. I met Wolfgang during a wet plate portrait session in Graz. He came up to me ans asked if I could do a portrait of him in his lighthouse keeper outfit. Austria is not famous for lighthouses, so I was interested what is behind all of this. He die a lot in his life, he was a forma photographer, he has a Diploma in Education for people with special needs, he worked as a photographer for the army and much more. He then had a rough time and needed to step back. He still needs help with some tasks, but at some point he decided for himself, that this can not be everything and started to help people who are in the need of help. With that he brings light into their lives. It was a busy shooting day, but I figured If I let him sit down by the window with his little lighthouse, it makes the most of sense.
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!
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, HenselExpert 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
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
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 🙂
