Collodion - Wet Plate Images

[Steve M Hostetter]

needed a break from all the camera making

8x10, B&S Old Workhorse, straight scan. splat-ish spot in center is me being stupid - heated plate too much


Bananas by Sergei Rodionov, on Flickr

very simple and elegant nicely balanced and clean tones, well done Bravo

[SergeiR]

very simple and elegant nicely balanced and clean tones, well done Bravo

thank you

[Tri Tran]

Thanks Randy, the smoke effect came from the OOF highlight of my Silver Sheen trees background. I used my 18 in Hermagis for this shot because I like the OOF on my ground glass. That's it , no secret !

Here's the shot behind the scene,

1 st shot with Xray material for Carbon Print.
2 nd shot with Alumitype for a collector
3 rd shot Ruby Ambrotype

Tri Tran,

Is the smoke in the original subject, or an artifact of the process?

The glassware looks so sharp, a really great choice to show off Ruby plate.

I find this still life has more 'life' than the usual people portraits.

You really have something unique there, congratulations!

[Scott Schroeder]

needed a break from all the camera making

8x10, B&S Old Workhorse, straight scan. splat-ish spot in center is me being stupid - heated plate too much

Hey Sergei. I take it that you heated it too much during varnishing and that happened?
Interesting, never seen it before.
Ya, know it could be an opportunity to learn the art of stripping and re-varnishing the plate.
It's actually fairly straight forward but you can dissolve the image if you fall asleep or something.

Alexey had a writeup. I think you can have google translate..... ;-)
http://unrealalex.livejournal.com/78260.html

[SergeiR]

Scott - nope. Actually while preheating plate for varnishing and drying it up. Makes proceess much faster, but i guess i was still thinking about other stuff as was trying and it overheated. I never had this before, felt really stupid as typically i take good care of never overheating plate (i was experimenting with dry plate varnishing before wet plating, so i made my share of "oh damn, i wish i didnt stick dirty fingers onto clean side" & etc ). I heat them up on electrical top now - makes whole process WAY cleaner and faster, but i forgot to switch electricity off - day dreamed

I'd strip plate and reshoot if sun werent gone and also i really like how tones turned out on that banana... So i kept it

(riiight..google translating this one is a good fun )

[SergeiR]

PS: i am still really puzzled how he gets all the chemistry in Russia.. when i was there this summer and asked around people looked at me like i was mad

[GSX4]

If you move in closer, you will crop the image, and should get shorter exposures. With my Interfit SC655 Coolite kit, and 300mm Tessar @ f4.5 I get around a 3 second exposure. At f5.6, that is 6 seconds. How far are your lights from your sitter?? I light all bulbs on one side as my main light, and only 3 bulbs out of 6 on the other. My lights are approximately 4 and a 1/2 feet from the sitter... Andrew

[cuypers1807]

I get your point about moving the lights closer but the bellows draw for me evens it out. I shot this at 10-12 seconds with my 300mm @5.6. I used the same lights as you but used and prefer the octaboxes which explains the loss of a stop.

[alex from holland]

It has been a long time ago since I have posted an ambrotype over here.
This one took me 2 whole days until I was satisfied with the result.

"Tea time"

for more background info just have a look at my weblog: http://collodion-art.blogspot.nl/201...-tea-time.html



Dallmeyer 5d 480mm f6 petzval
exposure time 2 seconds
Black glass ambrotype

[gsinico]

This one took me 2 whole days until I was satisfied with the result.

"Tea time"

for more background info just have a look at my weblog: http://collodion-art.blogspot.nl/201...-tea-time.html



Dallmeyer 5d 480mm f6 petzval
exposure time 2 seconds
Black glass ambrotype[/QUOTE]

you have to be very satisfied whit this marvellous realization!