Sometimes when I am scanning negatives the scanner makes deciscions I wouldn't have made. And those decisions sometimes work out really good. In this case You see a photo of the Schwebebahn in Wuppertal, Germany. For some reason the scnner decided to include the space between two negatives in the scan. The first photo is the result. And you know what? I kinda like it. Like the photo has been made 100 years ago.

Last year I made some large prints for my graduation at my art school. I really wanted to do that in my own darkroom as well. However it was not the right time. Then a month ago I went back to my school to do another large format print. That sparked my interest again. Since my personal situation changed I could start building my own setup in my darkroom to print large.
First I bought a gutter of 4 meters which I had cut in 3 aqual parts. They came with the appropriate endcaps. When I glued them on I poured water i them to make sure they were watertight. Next I bought some wood to make a stand on which I can hang the paper for the really big prints. I haven't finished the stand yet but I did make 3 prints to test the developing of a large sheet of paper in the gutters. My Durst enlarger can take a piece of paper of 90x125 cm. Big enough to give my gutters a serieus test run.

With this setup you don't need a lot of room to go bigger then big. I am fortunate enough to be given three rolls of expired paper that have some approx. 6 meters of paper left on them. Thanks Carlo! Now I can test and try out what works and what doesn't work in this setup without costing me an arm and a leg. 

Since I didn't find a lot of info about this way of printing large prints I made a little video that shows how the workflow is at my darkroom. Enjoy watching the video:
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Last year I bought a very nice Sinar P2 camera. Included were 4 lenzes. One lens was a wide anlge lens. 65mm f/5.6. I figured I would use this one in the studio much and I won't be taken the P2 out very much so why not build my own fixed focus wide angle 4x5 camera. The first two tries failed miserably. the third try ended up being a very nice 4x5 pinhole camera. The fourth try resulted in a nice fixed focus 4x5 wide angle camera. Something like the Trevelwide but more awesome of course :-)

So here are some photos of the cameras themselves. Photos made with the pinhole can be seen in my previous blogpost. Today I went out to shoot some photos with the wide angle camera. I'll show them when I have developped them.

As you can see the wide angle camera is still work in progress but it is light tight. I am planning on painting it black have a strap on it for easy carrying and a tripod holder should be fixed to it as well.

Below some photos from the pinhole camera.

A couple of weeks ago I decided to build my own 4x5 pinhole camera. Somehow I maged to create something that actually works. This pinhole camera was a practice run for my home build wide angle fix focused 4x5 camera. That one is stil work in progress. I have made some photos with the pinhole camera. 

On september 13 of this year The Impossible Project ceased to be...or at least their name. Earlier this year the major investor in The Impossible Project acquired the Polaroid name. A logical step is the planned use of the name is it has better brand recognition wth the common public then The Impossible Project. In the days since I have seen many comments on the various media of excited people that Polaroid is finally back. The Polaroid name will no doubt bring more sales for them then the name Impossible Project would bring them. However if the film is rubbish it could backfire of course. The Impossible Project has been trying hard for the last 9 years to recreate the original Polaroid look. Because of restrictions in use of chemicals and the lack of certain chemicals the Polaroid once use it has been a difficult process. Their last generation colofilm is really good. Consistent color and you dan need to shield it as the previous version of their film. At least that is my impression when shooting on a sunny day. With the following photo's I did not shield the film immediately. Within a coupple of minutes you can see the image and after 10 to 15 minutes it is completely developped.

Below the shots I made last weekend in Maastricht. It was a sunny saterday:

Today a quick visit to the area of Leiwen in Germany near the Mosel. So I thought to bring a polaroid camera and a pack of TIP Black and white exprired round frame with me:

The finished photos as the are displayed. Difficult to photograph because of the reflections:

In my last weeks at the SASK in Hasselt, Belgium I am still learning. Printing big *ss photo's from New55 negatives. Part of my graduation. Carlo decided to go big with the photo's I shot and I agreed...of course. I always wanted to do this. So 2 prints have been made. Most of the work has been done by Carlo. However a third one is on its way. This time I will do the whole thing. If it works it is part of my graduation as well. If not I have gained valuable knowledge of how not to do something. A couple of photos shot with too little light and too long exposure handheld with a smartphone :-)

Last year I started a 365 day project. I never got to finish it and I realised I never put up the photo's made in the first days of june 2016. Here they are. Unedited:

As promised the results of my little experiment with the Impossible 8x10 positive and chemical pod and a sheet of Fomapan 100 18x24 film. Because of the size I put a sheet of a4 paper in the back to prevent the developer paste from messing up my processor. Unfortunately the focus is way of but I like the photo anyway. So I you have some Impossible positives laying around send them to me :-)

Above photo's are straight scans. No editing besides a little tweak in the scan software. Below some interpretations:

The top 2 photos are scans of the negative. The murkines is the white stuff from the chemicals that I could got of very well with ff-ing up the emulsion. In the original you can see where I scratched the negative. Next step is to contact print the negative.