How to repair a bent lens hood.

Recently I found a very nice Dallmeyer 3A f4.

A very nice lens with a perfect working aperture inside (original).

Just great for outside use.

The downside was that it's lens hood was bent at several places.
As I prefer to have these things solved I made a wooden mold.

It's made of a strong piece of 18mm wood.
Just drawn a line using the radius of the lens hood.

Cut it in two pieces using a jig saw and it is ready for use.

Just use a simple wood clamp to force it into the right shape.

It will never be 100% but very close to that.

 

Unfortunately the previous owner tried to clean it

with brass cleaner......
So that's the next step.
Getting rid of all that brass cleaning stuff.

 

 

 

 

The making of:"too long exposure"

A while ago I contacted Shane Balkowitsch who is hosting the Mask Series.
I volunteered to make a plate also.

For this series about 150 wet platers from all over the world
are using a gas mask in their work.
More about this series you can find at the special weblog:
http://wetplatemaskseries.com/

 

It took me a while planning the ideas how to make this plate.

As usual my car was fully loaded.
This time including a boxed skeleton!
After setting up all the needed equipment I realized that I forgot to take my
special box holding unused clean plates
...................aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.

That's THE worst nightmare which can happen.

In one of my boxes I only had 2 dibond plates which
I once received for testing.
So that was the only material available for the moment.
The protective foil was leaving some residue so I still

had to clean them with alcohol and water.

Doing this in the field is always a pain the ass
as cleaning might cause flawswhich of course happened.

But with some failures we managed to make a
decent plate which will be send to the US.


For the making of video click : HERE

 

"Too long exposure"
26x26 ambrotype made on dibond
7 seconds exposure time
Dallmeyer 3A at f8

 

 

Erwin Olaf, a extremely talented photographer from The Netherlands

Almost 2 years ago I contacted Erwin Olaf through e-mail asking him
If he was willing to pose for me on wet plate.
Unfortunately I never got an answer until 2 months ago.
He phoned me apologizing not responding earlier and he asked me if I still
wanted to make that portrait.

Willing?? He still was on top of my list!
We made an appointment and today we met him in his beautiful studio in Amsterdam. As always, Ferry vd Vliet helped me during the shoot.
He also made "the making of" pictures

For those who don’t know Erwin Olaf, just have a look at his website. http://www.erwinolaf.com/
He’s by far the most creative Dutch photographer whose work is admired
by many collectors and museum. An extremely creative centipede.

Beside all of this he’s still a very accessible friendly person
who’s very proud of what he has achieved.
He showed me a new series he’s been working on.
The prints were made with the carbon printing process.
I can tell you, I have never ever seen such beautiful B&W prints in my entire life.
I really admire his works. Just fantastic.

Because of his extremely busy schedule we only had a few hours for this shoot.
Knowing the wet plate process you might understand that there was very little time
for experimenting with light, pose and exposure
So I choose for a close up portrait. Especially because of his light blue eyes.

Erwin, again, thank you so much for you time and being so cooperative!

 

 

26x26cm black glass ambrotype
Hermagis 350 mm 4.5 petzval
Exposure time 5 seconds