UNDATED – The patio of the restaurant Fegetasche near Plön in Germany. Scan © Mark Zanzig/zanzig.com
The story behind the image
I recently purchased a tiny lot of six glass negatives showing the patio of the restaurant Fegetasche near Plön in Germany. It used to be a customs station for centuries but had been turned into a restaurant and hotel probably as early as 1840.
The name Fegetasche is funny because it literally means ‘sweeping the pocket’ and referred to the customs duties you had to pay when crossing the customs station.
Sadly, the images do not carry a production date. BUT I did some research and came across the excellent website ploener-ansichten.de which features several historic images of Fegetasche as well as a brochure of the restaurant that had been published probably between 1955 and 1960. And this brochure features exactly one of the images in my lot.
While that image could have been taken long before the 1950s I do not believe it. If you were to print a brochure promoting your completely renovated hotel and restaurant, would you use images that are 20+ years old? I don’t think so.
Today, the former restaurant and hotel has been converted into a premium hotel with private access to the small Edebergsee.
By the way, working with glass negatives is truly stunning. To achieve the maximum quality I scanned the images at 4800 dpi with a grayscale depth of 16 bits/pixel, which resulted in image files just under 1 GB and an unedited size of 27564 x 18870. I’ve written about this experience earlier in my Scan Talk #1. (The edited file is slightly smaller because I had to crop away the rough borders. But it still has a whopping size of just under 500 MP, good enough for very large prints. Phew.)
Design ideas
The high resolution image
| Capture Date | c. 1955 |
| Photographer | unknown |
| Location | Plön, Germany |
| Image Source | 10 x 15 cm original black and white glass negative |
| Digital Image Source | EPSON Perfection 4870 Photo |
| Digital Image Source Format | TIFF, 16 bits/pixel, grayscale |
| Edited Image Format | JPEG, 24 bits/pixel, sRGB |
| Edited Image Dimensions | 27171 x 18299 Pixels |
| Copyright | Scan by Mark Zanzig/zanzig.com |
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