Caffenol: Hi Gabriel, good to have you here on the caffenol blog. Could you please introduce yourself.

Gabriel: Hi Dirk, I am a photography lecturer and professional photographer based in Nottingham in the Uk. I work and live at  Clear View House where I have a professional darkroom and photographic studio.

Caffenol: Anything else you want to add about you as a person?

Gabriel: I also publish an independent photography magazine called Lumen Magazine which is published every quarter. It is available to read free online at www.lumenmagazine.com

Caffenol: How do you drink your coffee?

Gabriel: I love a good double shot latte or a macchiato. I used to own and run a coffee shop and gallery in the city centre of Nottingham. I really love my coffee!!!

Caffenol: Being a Pro and making a living out of photography, what do like about it in general? Do you shoot a lot in your free time as well?

Gabriel: Everything I do in life revolves around photography. I teach 3 days from 9-9 and the rest of the week is spent in the studio or in the darkroom. I am currently re-building a new darkroom at Clear View House.

I also work as a professional darkroom printer. I have just recently finished some printing for Roger Mayne, an iconic British photographer. The work will be exhibited this November in the Djanogly Gallery in Nottingham

Caffenol: How did you get into caffenol?

Gabriel: I love experimentation and alternative/historical processes. I cannot resist trying out anything that involves the alchemy of photography.

Caffenol: What kind of gear do you use? Do you have digital stuff as well?

Gabriel: I work with mostly film at the moment. I gave up digital over a year ago (apart from some commercial work) I have a collection of film cameras but I mainly shoot with box Brownies, Holgas, a Bronica SQB, a Mamiya 645af, a 5×4, two 10×8 cameras, several half plate and full plate cameras and the largest camera I own os a 8.5×15 inch Banquet camera. I do own a digital fuji x pro 1 which is a great little camera.

Caffenol: Which is your favorite camera/lens combination at the moment? Why?

Gabriel: The two formats I love the most are 6×6 and 10×8. With the 6×6 I shoot mainly with a 150mm lens. I love shooting with my Holga and with the 10×8 cameras. I can use them for film, wet plate, Harman Dp paper and paper negatives. The 10×8 makes great size negatives for Platinum prints.

Caffenol: Did you ever do wedding shots in caffenol? do you offer caffenol development for your clients?

Gabriel: I shoot with Porta 400 on the Mamiya 645 for weddings but I do offer/develop other commercial work in caffenol.

Caffenol: Which caffenol recipe do you use? Why?

Gabriel: I use a variation of the CL recipe. I always stand develop my caffenol films from 1-2 hours.

Caffenol: You combine Platinum printing & caffenol  photography with caffenol. Can you describe us a bit more how both of those fascinating techniques work together?

Gabriel: With wet plate collodion I can make a glass negative with the plate camera or the 10×8 using the wet plate collodion process. Once I have dried the plate I can then contact print onto fibre based paper and develop it in caffenol. With the Platinum printing process I shoot large format 10×8 negatives and develop them in Caffenol. Then I contact print those to make Platinum prints which have the most amazing tones and detail.

Caffenol: You are also a qualified teacher of photography and a lecturer in photography at the University Centre Peterborough. Is caffenol part of your photography courses? If so, what do your students think about it?

Gabriel: Caffenol is one of the many processes that I have introduced to the photography course since I started there two years ago.

I am a firm believer that learning traditional and historical darkroom craft makes photography students not only more informed but better practitioners of the craft. The students absolutely love the historical and alternative processes and many of them decide to use these processes in their final major exhibitions.

Caffenol: Where do you buy your ingredients for caffenol?

Gabriel: I source my ingredients from Silverprint in the UK, or from Ebay as well as from Bostick & Sullivan in the USA.

Caffenol: Among the gadgets that you own, is there something that you wish you hadn’t bought? Why?

Gabriel: A 5×4 fiji Polaroid back for my 5×4. I just bought one as they announced the end of production of the pack film!

Caffenol: How do you scan your Pictures? What kind of tools do you use for post processing? Explain your workflow.

Gabriel: I have recently fallen in love with two films, Ilford FP4 and Adox CHS 100. Both are great for portraits and give the image a certain classic look. I then develop them in Caffenol, stand developed from 1-2 hours depending on the highlight retention/expansion. For web purposes I scan on an Epson v700 Scanner using Silverfast

Caffenol: How do you educate yourself to take better pictures?

Gabriel: I constantly experiment, make mistakes and try again. My library of photographers work is a constant for me, I always spend several hours a week looking through my books. One of the greatest transformations has been through teaching photography; never have I been so analytical about my own work and approach than before I started teaching.

Caffenol: Among your works, which one is your favorite? Why?

Gabriel: mmm, that’s a hard one. As yet I have not discovered that image.

Caffenol: Any other shots you want to show?

Gabriel: Sure: These images are from a variety of cameras formats including 6×6, 5×4 and 10×8 Films were Adox chs 100 and FP4 all stand developed.

Caffenol: Whose work has influenced you most?

Gabriel: Bill Brandt and Irving Penn

Caffenol: What is the one thing you wish you knew when you started taking photos?

Gabriel: That Polaroid would stop producing large format. I would have had a fridge full by now!

Caffenol: Where can we find your work?

Gabriel:  I have a website and blog:

www.gabrielvaningen.com

www.gabrielvaningen.com/blog

I also publish Lumen magazine www.lumenmagazine.com

You can also find me on Facebook, Twitter & Linkedin

Caffenol: Thank you very much for this very interesting Interview! I always find it to be interesting meeting new people and to learn about their style  and technique.

Gabriel: It was a pleasure!

You can be in the caffenol blog as, well! Just contact me, or msg me on Facebook, DM me on Twitter and we get your stuff on here!

Related posts:

1. A Coffee with… Dirk Essl
2. A Coffee with…No. 1 – Dagie Brundert
3. A Coffee with…No. 5 – Urban Hafner

Caffenol: Hi Urban, I hope you had a lovely Christmas and lots of presents. Can you please introduce yourself.

Urban: My name is Urban Hafner. I’m a web developer from Germany. I currently live in France with my lovely wife and our two year old daughter.

Caffenol: Anything else you want to add about you as a person?

Urban: I not only develop my film in coffee, but I’m also addicted to it. I have at least 3 espressos each day.

Caffenol: What do like about photography in general?

Urban: Photography is what let’s me relax after a day of work and it’s something that gets me out of the house. Especially analog photography as it’s hands on as most of my cameras are quite old and there’s a physical object (the film) involved. As a programmer I sit in front of the computer all day manipulating bits. So for me it’s nice to get away from the computer and do something in the real world. Or so I tell myself … I still sit in front of the computer for scanning my images, writing this interview, and looking at other peoples work.

Caffenol: How did you get into caffenol?

Urban: When Reinhold G. (the other Mr Caffenol) started experimenting with Caffenol we were both members of the same German analog photography forum. This way I could follow his progress from day one. If found it quite intriguing that you could create your own state of the art developer out of household ingredients and decided to give it a try.

Caffenol: What kind of gear do you use?

Urban: I have a problem … I have too many cameras 35mm, 127, 120, SLRs, TLRs, point and shoots, toy cameras, pinhole cameras, and rangefinders. My favourites are my TLRs and my folding cameras (both in 35mm and 120). The only digital camera in our house is my wife’s Nikon D40. Have a look at this flickr set for images of a small part of my gear.

Caffenol: Which is your favorite camera/lens combination at the moment? Why?

Urban: Right now my favourite camera is a Coronet Commander that was give to me by Leon Taylor. It’s a plastic camera made some time in the 60s or 70s in England. It was meant to produce 16 images on a roll of film, but the film gate can be cut away to produce bigger negatives. As the lens doesn’t cover the bigger negative it creates a nice vignetting that goes very well along with the crappy plastic lens. I currently use this camera to shoot a series on small shops here in Grenoble and I’m planning to continue with it when I move back to Germany next year.

Caffenol: Which caffenol recipe do you use? Why?

Urban: I generally use Reinhold’s recipes as I have a scientific mindset and don’t like measuring things in tablespoons. I started out with Caffenol-C-M but I’ve now switched to Caffenol-C-L as I’m lazy and don’t want to spend 10 minutes agitating a development tank.

Caffenol: Where do you buy your ingredients for caffenol?

Urban: I buy the coffee from the supermarket and the vitamin c from the pharmacy. I wasn’t able to find water free washing soda here in France so I just bought 2kg from the German Amazon Store. My potassium bromide came from eBay. I bought 100g a while ago and I expect it will last quite a while.

Caffenol: Among the gadgets that you own, is there something that you wish you hadn’t bought? Why?

Urban: There are many cameras that I wish I’d never bought. That’s the problem with analog gear, most of it is just so cheap and you don’t think twice and just buy it. For me that’s a problem as I’ve noticed that I take the best shots with the cameras that I’ve had the longest and therefore know the best. With too many cameras you obviously don’t get to shoot with each of them very often and never get the most out of them. That’s why I’ve sold quite a cameras this year. There are still too many left however.

Caffenol: Do you shoot Auto-Mode, A-Mode, S-Mode, P-Mode, M-Mode? Autofocus or manual?

Urban: That depends entirely on the situation and the camera. When I take pictures of my two year old daughter I either use my autofocus SLR in aperture priority mode or my autofocus point and shoot. All the other cameras I own are either manual focus or fixed focus and contain no electronics so I have to shoot in manual mode. Depending on the situation I either use my Gossen Polysix hand-held meter, Andrew Lawn’s exposure calculator, or just the sunny 16 rule.

Caffenol: How do you scan your Pictures? What kind of tools do you use for post processing? Explain your workflow. If you have a Darkroom, you can talk about it, post a picture of it.

Urban: I use a Canon Canoscan 8800f in combination with Vuescan to scan my negatives. I then import them into Apple Aperture, crop them, set the white balance, adjust the levels and remove dust if necessary.

Caffenol: How do you educate yourself to take better pictures?

Urban: I don’t really. At least not consciously. After all this is a hobby for me and shouldn’t turn into work … But subconsciously I’m sure I get influenced by my favourite photographers.

Caffenol: Among your works, which one is your favorite? Why?

That is a hard question. Right now I guess I would say it is one of my shots with the Coronet Commander. The vignetting and the blurry corners worked beautifully on this subject.

Caffenol: Any other shots you want to show?

Caffenol: Whose work has influenced you most?

Urban: There is no one person that influenced me. I look at so many images each day on Flickr and various photo blogs that it becomes quite a blur at times.

Caffenol: What is the one thing you wish you knew when you started taking photos?

Urban: That was so long ago (at least 15 years) that I really can’t remember. What I do remember though from going back to analog photography is that slowing down is a good thing! I immediately noticed how my pictures got better as I was forced to take more time focusing with my manual focus SLR.

Caffenol: Where can we find your work?

Urban: Just go to my website. Links to my Flickr account, Facebook page, Google+, and Twitter accounts are listed in the sidebar.

Caffenol: Thank you very much for this very interesting Interview! I wish you all the best in France and look forward meeting you next year.

Urban: Thanks for the interview and see you some time next year for a real coffee in Munich!

Related posts:

1. A Coffee with…No. 3 – Şan Güneş
2. A Coffee with… Dirk Essl
3. A Coffee with…No. 2 – Kiril Miloshev

All the best for the next year!

Any New Year Resolution?
I can give you some tips:

• Shoot more Film!
• Develop in caffenol!
• Share the Love!

Sincerly,

Dirk

Related posts:

1. Happy New Year!
2. 1 year caffenol.org – a flashback
3. Merry Christmas!

Next year we will of course continue ‘A Coffee with’ and  I have some new films to test out. Let’s see what 2013 brings.

Enjoy the calm time of the year!

Related posts:

1. Merry Christmas!
2. Happy New Year!

I know that there are plenty of ways to remove dust from negatives in post, but the best way of course is to properly dry your negatives in a (nearly) dust-free room.

Top Tip here: hang your washed film in the bathroom and before you hang the film, turn on the shower with hot water for 1-2 minutes till you have a foggy bathroom, hang your film, and close the door. If you washed your film good enough, your negatives should come out pretty dust-free. And for all the remaining dust spots, or if you have scratched your film, lean back and watch my brandnew video on how to remove dust from a scanned negative, using Adobe Photoshop Elements 11.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 is currenlty about $80 in the US at Amazon and super cheap in Germany for only €39,90

I will post other methods as well, if there is any interest. Make sure to tell me your favourite image editor or your method to remove dust. You can also join our wonderful facebook group and meet lots of other caffenol addicts.

Related posts:

1. Scan VS print
2. Fomapan 400 in Caffenol-STD – Experiments and Results. And Large Format
3. Caffenol as paper developer

http://www.caffenol-cookbook.com/

The book is under constant development, so you will find quite some things that change from time to time – visit to visit. This is all done in our effort to serve you the finest and latest cutting edge Caffenol recipes from around the globe.

I am honoured to be part of this project and hope it helps to make more people addicted to caffenol just as we all are.

“We” are:

Bo Sibbern-Larsen

Reinhold G

Mike Overs

Eirik Russel Roberts

John Nanian

John Caradies

Gerald Figal

Martina Woll

Dirk Essl

Related posts:

1. Fomapan 400 in Caffenol-STD – Experiments and Results. And Large Format
2. The Delta Recipe Goes Standard.

Caffenol: Good Morning, Chris! Grab yourself some tea and: please introduce yourself.

Chris: Hi Dirk, it’s me, your colleague Chris. I’m raised and born in Munich and always looking for the opinion to do things differently.

Caffenol: Anything else you want to add about you as a person?

Chris: I’m not a photographer and I don’t drink Coffee.

Caffenol: What do you like about photography in general?

Chris: I like focusing on things and keeping moments. The other thing is that I’m a really bad painter, so I have to take photos…

Caffenol: Haha, I even have a bad handwriting, that’s why I use a computer to write.

Caffenol: How did you get into caffenol?

Chris: Together we developed film the first time in Caffenol, I think 2 years ago…

Caffenol: What kind of gear do you use?

Chris: I have a Pentax ME Super an and a Revue, which is like the Pentax, but not so heavy and better for me to carry it with me on the street.

Caffenol: You’ve got some freaking huge scissors in your bag, why that?

Chris: The small scissors from my first aid kit has been removed by the Airport security when I was heading to Thailand and the only scissors I had to replace it where those big ones.

Caffenol: Which caffenol recipe do you use? Why?

Chris: Yours,

Caffenol: Where do you buy your ingredients for caffenol?

Chris: I’m the lucky one who gets supported by you, Dirk. Thank you by the way…

Caffenol: Among the gadgets that you own, is there something that you wish you hadn’t bought? Why?

Chris: Yes, I boughtt a copy of a Holga. I never used it, so I’m going to sell it so some Hipster kiddy or so

Caffenol: Do you shoot Auto-Mode, A-Mode, S-Mode, P-Mode, M-Mode? Autofocus or manual?

Chris: I shoot the sherif. I’m still a bloody beginner and not so familar with all the technical things. For me It’s important to catch ephemeral moments, feelings and things that are gone away a few seconds later. I often  have no time to think about what configuration would be the best and the most time I even don’t know what would be the best. I will keep the learner plate for the next years

Caffenol: How do you scan your Pictures? What kind of tools do you use for post processing?

Chris: I don’t have a dark room, but I bought a changing bag to put the film in the development tank, go on with your recipe. After this I clean it with ph neutral soap. After washing down the soap with wather I leave the film in the water for a few minutes fevore I hang it someware for drying. I try not to hang it in the most dusty room.
After this I scan the film with an hp scanjet 8200. For processing I use Lightroom. I just cut them, remove the dust and decide if I keep them in “color” or convert them to BW. That’s it.

Caffenol: How do you educate yourself to take better pictures?

Chris: The most education I still get from the discussions with you or straight from playing around.

Caffenol: Among your works, which one is your favorite?

Caffenol: Any other shots you want to show?

Caffenol: Whose work has influenced you most?

Chris: Dirk Essl, Vivian Maier and Erich Hartmann (Not the Pilot!!!)

Caffenol: What is the one thing you wish you knew when you started taking photos?

Chris: What the heck is ISO ?

Caffenol: Where can we find your work?

http://500px.com/WalchpunktChristian

http://www.dreadland.de - my Photography project about people with dreadlocks. It’s just about to start. (in German)

Caffenol: Thank you very much for this very interesting Interview!

Chris: Cu tomorrow, Dirk

You know, that you can be featured on caffenol.org, do you? Just mail me. Message me or DM me and we get your stuff on the site!

Related posts:

1. A Coffee with… Dirk Essl
2. A Coffee with…No. 3 – Şan Güneş
3. A Coffee with…No. 1 – Dagie Brundert

Caffenol: Hey Şan, I made some fresh turkish coffee with plenty of sugar. While I boil it a third time, please introduce yourself.

Şan: Hello there! My name is Şan and I’m a student who lives in İstanbul, I just started photography a year ago as a hobby.

Caffenol: Anything else you want to add about you as a person?

Şan: I never call myself a photographer, photography is just a hobby for me to spend some free time and have a chat with people about it. At least for now…

Caffenol: What do like about photography in general?

Şan: I started photographing with my dads Canon FTb, and only shot analogue since(Except for few moments when I didn’t had the opportunity to carry a film camera with me). I’m mainly interested in the action of taking photos, rather than the final result I get – this is the reason I shoot film with the manual mode. Photography makes an ordinary person to get out of their home and have a little photography walk in the town, which is pretty fun and opens up your horizon.
Photographing is a good hobby, it’s not as ingrate as playing a musical instrument where you need to practice so frequently!

Caffenol: How did you get into caffenol?

Şan: So I decided to develop my films one day, and while watching tutorials about film developing I came across a caffenol video! That was it, why
buy a ready developer when you can create your own? It’s like planting your own vegetables instead of buying them from the store. So I actually started
developing films in my bathroom with caffenol. I like preparing my caffenol and spending time on it. If I ever wanted quality and rapidness I would just shoot digital.

Caffenol: What kind of gear do you use?

Şan: I got a Canon FTb and a Nikon F90 from my dad. A Praktica MTL 5B and a Zenit 19 which I bought. I have a variety of M42 lenses which I sometimes use with an adapter on the F90. I also have some Smena cameras(1, 6, 8, 8M, Symbol). I got a Canon G9 which I take with myself when traveling, because of it’s small size and capabilities.

Caffenol: Which is your favorite camera/lens combination at the moment?

Şan: Praktica MTL 5B and Carl Zeiss Jena Tesar 2.8/50 – It is my first camera which I bought. I simply LOVE the massive sound of the steel curtain, and the looks of the peoples faces when they hear it. This massive “tank” camera makes me feel safe while photographing in empty streets. Also the lens is a very sharp one for it’s price.

Caffenol: Which caffenol recipe do you use?

Şan: I use the Delta-STD recipie, so far it was good for me. I may try other recipies in the future.

Caffenol: Where do you buy your ingredients for caffenol?

Şan: Carl Skull from the caffenol facebook group sent me some washing soda from the UK for a good price when I couldn’t find it anywhere locally. Nowadays, except for the coffee, I buy them from the Internet. That’s the cheapest place where I can find them.

Caffenol: Do you shoot Auto-Mode, A-Mode, S-Mode, P-Mode, M-Mode? Autofocus or manual?

Şan: I shoot in M mode. If the environment is too dark for me to focus, I use autofocus.

Caffenol: How do you scan your Pictures? What kind of tools do you use for post processing?

Şan: I don’t have a dark room, I scan my negatives with the HP Scanjet 4070. I can’t achieve a nice quality but it’s okay for most of the time. Sometimes I give away my films for scanning, I use Photoshop to play with the brightness/contrast of the image.

Caffenol: How do you educate yourself to take better pictures?

Şan: By examining other peoples work and discussing my pictures with my family.

Caffenol: Among your works, which one is your favorite? Why?

Şan: I like the shadows and the patterns on the walls in this picture. It was taken in Hagia Sophia which poses for photos perfectly, even if you don’t know what you are doing with your camera.

Caffenol: Any other shots you want to show?

Şan: Sure!

caffenol:

color film:

digital:

Caffenol: What is the one thing you wish you knew when you started taking photos?

Şan: I’m really new in this, and I probably still don’t know that thing yet!

Caffenol: Where can we find your work? (Flickr, tumblr, personal website, facebook, etc…)

Şan: You can find most of my work on my Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/antarktikali/

Caffenol: Thank you very much for this very interesting Interview! Even if you are at the beginning on your photographic journey, I can see from your work that you have a lot of fun. Keep exploring and just remember that the only thing that limits you is yourself and not the gear you use.

Şan: You’re welcome, thank you, too!

You know, that you can be featured on caffenol.org, do you? Just mail me. Message me or DM me and we get your stuff on the site!

Related posts:

1. A Coffee with… Dirk Essl
2. A Coffee with…No. 2 – Kiril Miloshev
3. A Coffee with…No. 1 – Dagie Brundert

Can we start? Sure we can!

Caffenol: Hi Kiril, nice to have you here on the site. Please introduce yourself.

Kiril: Hi, my name Is Kiril Miloshev and photography is my favorite hobby.
I mostly shoot musical performances, but also like to shoot kids portraits, some weddings and all other stuff I come across.

Caffenol: Anything else you want to add about you as a person?

Kiril: I have lots of hobbies, but photography is the one that I always go back to. My latest hobby is HAM Radio and now when I go to take pictures I have to carry radio equipment also. That’s why I enjoy the Nikon J1

Caffenol: What do like about photography in general?

Kiril: I like the moment when I feel the emotion of the scene that I shoot. That’s the moment when the real photography happens for me.

Caffenol: How did you get into caffenol?

Kiril: I was looking around internet for film developer info and got to caffenol.org. I liked the look of the samples in the site and decided to try it by myself.
One day I was mixing Caffenol integridients in a 500ml bucket at my office desk and one of my colleagues passed by and exclaimed – “Wow and you will be drinking all that coffee”

Caffenol: What kind of gear do you use? (You can include a picture of your gear if you like) Do you have digital stuff as well?

Kiril: For film I use a Leica M5 with some nice lenses.
For digital I use a Nikon D300 and a Nikon J1 (most of the time these days)

Caffenol: Which is your favorite camera/lens combination at the moment? Why?

Kiril: My favorite Camera/Lens combo is my Nikon J1 -> J to M adapter -> Voigtlander 50/1.1.
With this combination I get 135/1.1 lens with dof like 4, so it is perfect for shooting Blues concerts in dim light.

Caffenol: Which caffenol recipe do you use? Why?

Kiril: I mostly use the C-M recipe as I don’t have Kbr around. Maybe the next time I will buy some to test it

Caffenol: Where do you buy your ingredients for caffenol?

Kiril: I have found a Chemistry wholesaler near my office, so its easy to get the chemicals. The only issue is that most of them are sold in 1 kilo jars

Caffenol: Among the gadgets that you own, is there something that you wish you hadn’t bought? Why?

Kiril: The only gadget that I regret buying is an RC Nitro Truck. It turned out to be a huge disappointment.
I like all my photo gadgets and in latest time I mostly enjoy my new Voigtlander 50mm/1.1 M-mount lens, which Dirk was so kind to sell me

Caffenol: Do you shoot Auto-Mode, A-Mode, S-Mode, P-Mode, M-Mode? Autofocus or manual?

Kiril: With my Nikon D300 I shoot A-mode autofocus, with my Nikon J1 I shoot S with the kit lens or M with M-mount MF lenses.
With my Leica M5 I shoot M & MF (no other options there)

Caffenol: How do you scan your Pictures? What kind of tools do you use for post processing? Explain your workflow. Do you have a darkroom?

Kiril: I Scan all of my film pictures with Reflecta CrystalScan 7200 and I am quite happy with it. My workflow consists of  direct RAW scan and then process all files in Lightroom.
No dedicated darkroom for now. I develop all my negatives at my office.

Caffenol: How do you educate yourself to take better pictures?

Kiril: I do a lot of reading. This summer I have found http://www.lenswork.com/ site, which belongs to  photographer Brooks Jensen and it is my source of inspiration these days.
There are several good books about photography there and “Letting go of the camera” is a must read for every photographer.

Caffenol: Among your works, which one is your favorite? Why?

Kiril: This is a tough question. From the pictures I take there are several which I like a lot, but I can’t quite tell that I have a favorite one

Caffenol: Any other shots you want to show?

Kiril: Here are some of my favorite shots:

Caffenol: Whose work has influenced you most?

Kiril: Ansel Adams, Cole Thompson and many other.

Caffenol: What is the one thing you wish you knew when you started taking photos?

Kiril: That camera equipment is the less important thing in picture-taking process. I have lost lots of time reading equipment reviews and tech-geek forums.

Caffenol: Where can we find your work?

Kiril: Most of my work worth showing is on my facebook photography page: facebook.com/TheMusicPhotography

Caffenol: Kiril, thank you very much for this very interesting Interview! And I would like to thank you for all the efforts you do in accepting members in the group and giving them a warm welcome. I hope the next time we will have a proper coffe (and maybe a couple of beers) together.

Kiril: Thank you too, always a pleasure to talk with you

You know, that you can be featured on caffenol.org, do you? Just mail me. Message me or DM me and we get your stuff on the site!

Related posts:

1. A Coffee with… Dirk Essl
2. A Coffee with…No. 1 – Dagie Brundert

I am very, very excited to have my first coffee with Dagie Brundert, one of the few persons that attended an invisible baseball game. Dagies mission is to find beauty in simple things. oh and she does motion picture film!

Caffenol: Hi there, please introduce yourself.

Dagie: Hello, my name is Dagie Brundert, I’m a super 8 short film maker, I’ve been making films for more than 20 years and I’m very much in love with hand processing! I live in Berlin, Germany.

Caffenol: Anything else you want to add about you as a person?

Dagie: I drink my morning espresso with hot vanilla soy milk!

Caffenol: What do like about photography in general?

Dagie: Can I say photography and film? The analog stuff. I like to play, I like to be spontaneous, I carry my camera with me, stretch my antennas and I just find them: moments, objects, beauties, weird things … ever heard of wabi-sabi? That’s it! (www.wabisabisuper8.com).

And the fact that I can touch the material!

Caffenol: How did you get into caffenol?

Dagie: I read about it on the internet in some photography forums. I thought: wow! Is that really possible? And what about film? So I tried it and I was just overwhelmed.

Caffenol: What kind of gear do you use?

Dagie: I have several super 8 cameras, mostly Nizos, they are the best, two old Russian double super 8 wind-up cameras, and a Russian Lomo film tank that I use for processing.

Caffenol: Which is your favorite camera/lens combination at the moment? Why?

Dagie: My Nizo 561. Simply beautiful, a good lens and I especially love the “automatic B” which allows me to take fantastic time lapse scenes in poor light condition!

Caffenol: Which caffenol recipe do you use? Why?

Dagie: Reinholds Caffenol-C-M. Works fine with different speedy films.

Caffenol: Where do you buy your ingredients for caffenol?

Dagie: Aldi: Jacobs Cronat Gold; Holsten Waschsoda and Vitamin C Powder at Rossmann.

Caffenol: How do you scan your Pictures? What kind of tools do you use for post processing? Explain your workflow. If you have a Darkroom, you can talk about it, post a picture of it.

Dagie: I don’t really have a darkroom, I wait until night falls and then I sit down in the hallway which has no windows, close all doors an spiral my 15 meter of super 8 into the tank! Then I can turn on the light again! Watering? Bathroom shower!

Later I have it digitized, I edit most of my films on the computer using FinalCut.

Caffenol: Among your works, which one is your favorite? Why?

Dagie: It’s not really a film, only a scene, I just scanned some stills, it was the first time I used caffenol with Fomapan-R double super 8 film. It came out a bit brownish but I found it … heavenly!

And this one: an old expired Kodachrome K40 developed in Caffenol-C-M!

Find the digitally reversed version here:

Toronto, I like you as much as I like coffee from Dagie Brundert on Vimeo.

Oh yes, and this one:

… I used Rodinal, not Caffenol, does that count? I developed a TriX film and later colored it red. Using old French Colorvir (doesn’t exist any more, they discontinued the production many years ago).

Nightlight from Dagie Brundert on Vimeo.

Caffenol: Whose work has influenced you most?

Dagie: Don’t know … no special hero …

Caffenol:  Do you have any plans for the future?

Dagie: I will surely continue exploring the wide world of edible and potable things like coffee, red wine, tea … made some successful experiments with elderberry juice, rosemary tea, coca cola … next will be dark beer for sure!

Caffenol: Where can we find your work? (Flickr, tumblr, personal website, facebook, etc…)

Dagie: www.dagiebrundert.de

lablog.dagiebrundert.de

www.vimeo.com/dagie

www.wabisabisuper8.com

www.24stelsekunde.de

www.facebook.com/dagie.brundert

Caffenol: Thank you very much for this very interesting Interview, Dagie! I am amazed about your short films and what can be done with those little technical wonders. I have to admit I bought myself a Canon 310XL as I have several K40 Cassettes. I now need to find a way  to develop them…

You know, that you can be featured on caffenol.org, do you? Just mail me. Message me or DM me and we get your stuff on the site!

Related posts:

1. A Coffee with… Dirk Essl
2. Coffee in motion