FINISHING-TOUCHES-ON-MY-LED-SAFELIGHTS
22 Nov
DARKROOM BUILD

FINISHING TOUCHES TO MY LED SAFELIGHTS / Container Darkroom part 12

Recently I often ask myself when will the container darkroom be finished? To be honest I don't know if you can ever be finished designing your dream working space. In the last few weeks there were many things I fixed or installed. The most important one was for sure finally finishing up the LED safe lights. I started by stripping them off from the shelf completely, cut them to the length and solder them back together. I had quite a bit of troubles with that as I have not soldered in a while and it was hard to get the...

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Film-holder-for-glass-dry-plates-wet-plates
11 Nov
EMULSION, EQUIPMENT, OTHER

Modifying Film Holder to carry Glass or Dry-plates

Glass carrier is one of the key pieces of equipment if you want to get into alternative photographic processes specially Dry-plates or Wet-plates. There are not many ready to use film-holders around so that is why I made mine from a normal 4x5 sheet film holder. After many requests I received I have finally decided to make a tutorial and show you how I do it. List of things you will need: Sheet Film Holder  Metal cutting machine (Rotary tool, Jig or Bandsaw, even handsaw will work) Drill + Drill bit Wire (ideally made from 99% silver) Glue  File or sanding paper Pliers Masking tape Pencil Glass or tin plate...

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Working-in-container-darkroom
06 Nov
DARKROOM BUILD

FINALLY STARTED TO USE IT! / Container Darkroom part 11

So stoked to inform you that my container darkroom is finally ready to start printing, coating, creating… I was away for two weeks and had many things going on in the last week after I returned back home from a holiday in Greece. First off all I had to develop two plates I shot during the trip and edit everything into a video.  Part one is already uploaded so make sure to check it out and Subscribe to catch the next one! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqERkTVxT4g&t=3s After so much construction going on all the time I have to admit my darkroom was a mess but shelves...

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Cyanotype-tutorial
28 Oct
OTHER, PRINTING PROCESSES

HOW TO MAKE CYANOTYPES – STEP BY STEP TUTORIAL

This is a step by step tutorial on how to make Cyanotypes from scratch. We will be mixing the chemicals, coating, exposing and developing until we have a cyanotype in our hands. Cyanotypes are one of the easiest and safest alternative photographic techniques. Cyanotypes were invented a long time ago in 1841 by Sir JohnHerschel just 3 years after the invention of photography. It uses a mixture of two iron compounds, which when mixed together, exposed to UV light and lastly washed in water oxidise to create its unique Prussian Blue coloured images. Cyanotypes are becoming widely popular these days among retro...

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Container-Darkroom-Lights-Update
15 Oct
DARKROOM BUILD

LIGHTS UPDATE + ROOF CLEANING / Container Darkroom part 10

There are more and more of you reading my blogs and watching my videos on YouTube channel and I am beyond grateful if I was able to help you in any way. I am finally starting to form a group of creative individuals who are interested in similar topics like me. We are helping each other and growing together so thank you again Back to the Container Darkroom. There is less and less work that needs to be done until I will be able to say I am finished. At this point there are mostly details left or just some modifications...

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Large-Format-Lens-Storage-Box
05 Oct
EQUIPMENT, OTHER

3D Printed Large Format Lens Storage Box

I am in large format photography for a few years now and the thing I struggled the most with was how to store my lenses. I often take my camera on backpacking trips which means I have to store them in my backpack somewhere. Most of the time I used soft leather lens pouches that were leftover from my digital Canon lenses. It surely protects the lens from surface damage like scratches but it does not provide a good enough protection of the lens elements (if I bump my backpack in a rock) or moving parts like aperture adjuster… Also...

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28 Sep
EQUIPMENT, OTHER

Restoring Vintage Kodak Brownie No. 3A

As a landscape & nature lover I was looking for an appropriate old analog camera that would be able to make panoramic shots and ideally accept glass dry plates with some modifications. After quite a bit of searching and reading I realised I should start looking into old Kodak cameras. Also in terms of my tight budget it seemed the best choice. So I started checking different online resale stores, mostly ebay. Let me say that it is much harder to find second hand analog equipment here in Europe, especially ones produced in the USA. After a few months of...

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24 Sep
EMULSION, EQUIPMENT, OTHER

COATING GLASS DRY PLATES – Step by Step Tutorial

In this blogpost I will guide you through the process of coating glass dry plates with silver gelatine emulsion. When I started coating my own plates I wished I had stumbled on a complete tutorial like this. I had a lot of different information from forums, blog posts, videos… All I was left with was to just start experimenting. Lots of emulsion has been poured with many failures along the way so here I am making a step by step tutorial without any secrets for everyone who would like to try out this magic. There are many commercially made emulsions...

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Exploring-canyon-with-4x5-large-format-camera
21 Sep
EMULSION, EQUIPMENT, ON THE FIELD, OTHER

Exploring the Canyon with Large Format Camera

What a great time I had exploring the Pekel Canyon in central Slovenia with my 4x5 camera and hand coated glass dry-plates. It was a cloudy day just calling for some long exposures. I packed my 4x5 Intrepid camera + holders filled with hand-coated glass dry-plates and headed for an adventure. I hiked along the waterfalls of Pekel Canyon in the hearth of Slovenia. Made an exposure and developed it in my Container Darkroom. Along the way I also filmed everything for you :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne23W2_XSsY&t=1s

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running-water-darkroom-sink
17 Sep
DARKROOM BUILD

GOT RUNNING WATER IN THE DARKROOM SINK/ Container Darkroom part 9

I built myself a darkroom sink (LINK) a while ago but It wasn't connected with water until recently. Finally got a plumber in the container to help me out. Because containers may be transported to another location in the future the water system has to be easy to detach and mounted on the surface. Plumber did the work accordingly. At the end there were two workers that arrived early in the morning and worked for around 2h. The whole installation was quite complicated with most of the things in place already there was not much room to work. I rushed...

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