"How to make a biometric foto in a minute..."

A day like the others. I decided to make the photo for my new ePass in my own studio. Thought, this would be a quick job... So I made a trial-shot with the digital Olympus, set me, the light, the background in the right position. Then I took the Hasselblad (in the moment, I only own a 50mm Distagon) an fixed it in the same position like the Olympus before... some shoots, took the film out of the magazine... developed it.
Aarrgh- the background was at the wrong position: a little bis other focal distance, a little bit difference of the camera position... Ok, no problem, I have a pola-mag, also. So I took a "brand new" polaroid out of the refrigerator, usable up to 2002, and made the first pic, but could no pull the white paper out of the magazine, ... long work in the dark-bag... no chance, the film magazine has corroded in the closed plastic bag... So had to learn, that the chemical substances inside the pola-bag can damage old polaroid films...
Ok, I took another pola-pack-film from the last century and hoped, it would work better. It did. After 2-3 trials I've found my portrait-position and could use the film-mag with a real new HP5.
(For the blog, I have made new photos of the situation ;-)
I developed the film as before, and, was happy to see, that all things matched together.

In the time while the film was drying, I built up the darkroom.
Found the best negative, put it into the enlarger. Then I looked for the right position in the enlarger-frame with the help of a stencil downloaded from the site of the German Embassy.
It was a very nice feeling, to see again the positives, drying on old newspapers... as I did since my 10.th year...
Last control with the stencil...arrgh... 1 mm lost at the right side of the photo. My nose was not anymore exactly in the middle..
OK... solutions again in the basins... position of the frame corrected... made some new enlarging...and they fitted...
For this "in a minute" I needed about 5 hours...
And all the time I thought to use the last polaroid "665" (of the world ?-) to get a positive and negative at the same time... But still I decided to use this film for a more spectacularly job ;-)

The Beginning of Photography, the Beginning of this Blog.

After more then 10 years of digital photography, I go back now to "my roots" from the 60th, when I've started with an "Agfa Synchrobox", a gift from my aunt.

Some topics you'll find here next: analog photographic, cyanotypie & other vintage prints, pinhole camera, analog cameras, lenses, darkroom, enlarger,...

...no text without photo. So I'll start with my first cyanotypie photo, made last year.
Exposure time = 11 hours, Tessar 1:4.5/135mm (9x12 cm).
...and it was my answer to the old question about the possibility to take pictures on cyanotypie.