World Wet Plate Day

Marvin d martian

Marvin d martian

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Mart
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For those that might be interested, this Saturday, May 5th is world wet plate day.

http://www.wetplateday.org/

I will be contributing to the pool of images, and it might be worth a look at the gallery when its complete.

Mart
 
It depends, the initial outlay is the primary cost especially the cost of silver nitrate. Its going to cost about £100 to make 1lt of silver nitrate, but once made and if its looked after then in will last for years. Collodion is not expensive and the iodides and bromides are not expensive. Again varnish is not expensive and you use very little. Substrates vary in cost dependent on what they are and the size, plain glass in cheap, coloured glass is expensive!! In all for a 10x8 it will cost in the region of £3-£3.50 per plate for chemicals + the substrate.
Mart
 
How slow is the emulsion realistically? I keep wondering about using my MPP with some plate holders and giving it a go, but I've got other things that keep distracting me
 
Depends what recipe you use, looking at PE's on APUG it says that with most commercially available gelatin you'll be looking at ISO 3-6.

I also did some back-of-envelope calculations, seems it wouldn't really be worth saving by making your own silver nitrate unless you can find a cheap source of a lot of silver (about 100g per batch).
 
I've been doing a bit of reading about wet plate collodion recently and thinking about trying it with a dry plate bookform holder I have (and a quarter plate camera), is that a good idea or would it be more sensible to modify a DDS for my Toyo monorail thing? I really don't want to have to go spending lots of money on equipment until I know I'm going to stick with it!

From what I've heard it can be difficult to determine the speed for various emulsions(?), they can range from 0.5 to 10 or so, so it's mainly just down to guess work and/or bracketing.
 
Yes its difficult to estimate speeds, the collodion (not gelatin) ages with time and gets slower and its speed is also affected by temperature and the amount of UV light available. Most of my exposures have been between 3 & 12 seconds so far.
You make your silver nitrate solution 8% by dissolving silver nitrate crystals in distilled water, so you will need 80g per Lt. To make silver nitrate crystals you would need to dissolve silver in nitric acid
I would recommend anyone interested in the process going on a course with John Brewer in Manchester, there is a lot to learn and its a very technique dependent process.

Mart
 
Marvin d martian said:
Yes its difficult to estimate speeds, the collodion (not gelatin) ages with time and gets slower and its speed is also affected by temperature and the amount of UV light available.
Click to expand...

Well yes, but i was referring to this:

PhotooEngineer said:
This can achieve up to ISO 40 speed.

Now, here come the caveats. This formula assumed, as they did at the time, that you were using standard (ACTIVE) photo gelatins, and you will be lucky if you get ISO 3 - 6 with it using modern oxidized photo grade gelatins. You cannot get active gelatins that are any good today, for the most part.

The only way to get speed is by chemical sensitization, or finishing. This involves the addition of any one of a variety of ingredients. The original was allyl thiourea, another was thiourea, and then finally they added sodium thiocyanate. Modern emulsions use either sodium thiosulfate or sodium thiosulfate plus a gold salt. It is done after the wash step, as excess halide represses this sensitization. This finishing step varies for every emulsion and sometimes for every batch of every emulsion.

The problem is that the quantity, time and temperature must be determined by trial and error as it is based on the surface area of the emulsion. This is a very complex procedure. This type of emulsion varies from batch to batch quite a bit in speed, contrast and fog.
Click to expand...
http://www.apug.org/forums/forum205/31480-real-formula.html

Marvin d martian said:
You make your silver nitrate solution 8% by dissolving silver nitrate crystals in distilled water, so you will need 80g per l.
Click to expand...

What recipe are you using? I've looked at a couple but neither of them say 8%, one's 40g to 400ml and the other's 130g to 500ml.

Marvin d martian said:
To make silver nitrate crystals you would need to dissolve silver in nitric acid.
Click to expand...

Please bear in mind that this will give off Nitrogen dioxide so it must be done either outside or in a fume cupboard. I did the maths with the recipe PE posted and it works out as needing 82.5g pure Silver to make 130g Silver nitrate, with an excess of Nitric acid. Pure silver is cheaper, but not by that much, it's still around £100 for the silver alone. Silver nitrate seems to be about £1 per gram.
 
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Superewza, the formulas quoted are not for wet plate collodion, but for a dry gelatin emulsion.
I think you have things a little mixed up as to the type of emulsions being talked about.
My silver bath is actually a 9% solution from Quinn Jacobson's Chemical Pictures book, and that is 90g of silver nitrate dissolved in 1Lt distilled water and yes silver nitrate is about £1 per gram. So your quote of 40g per 400ml is a 10% solution.

Mart
 
I'd love to have a go at wet plate but don't think I can get my act together in time for the 5th though.

Look forward to seeing everybody else's efforts though.
 
I'm another in here who'd love to take a crack at wet plate photography! Maybe one day :}
 
Well I managed to do 2 plates yesterday, even in fairly poor weather.
I took a couple of photos of the process.

Filtering and checking specific gravity and PH of the silver bath.
7001430720_69b9eef8ec.jpg
[/url] wet plate-1-2 by Marvin d martian100, on Flickr[/IMG]

7001429276_7853971b8f.jpg
[/url] wet plate-1 by Marvin d martian100, on Flickr[/IMG]

Setting up the camera for the shot
7147521435_89d340bb02.jpg
[/url] wet plate-4 by Marvin d martian100, on Flickr[/IMG]

Pouring the plate
7147522901_b7f06b7aed.jpg
[/url] wet plate-5 by Marvin d martian100, on Flickr[/IMG]

After developing, fixing the plate
7001438590_50e46c97cb.jpg
[/url] wet plate-6 by Marvin d martian100, on Flickr[/IMG]

Mart
 
Thank you, glad you like them :)

Mart
 
Making me yearn for 5x4 even more now
 
Fantastic work Mart, the bluebell is my favourite but they both brilliantly evoke photography from a bygone era (y)
 
Thanks for the comments, its taken about a year to get to where I am now with the process, now its just time and practice to get better.

Mart
 
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