New book on making silver gelatin dry plate, paper, and film

**dwross** · 16-Nov-2015, 07:13

Thank you all for the supportive thoughts. I'm starting to hold out hope for a community of emulsion-making photographers

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I think my morning coffee has kicked in enough to try for a few coherent responses.

re stainless steel: Better quality tools are always, well, better. Having said that, even cheap stainless steel will hold up fine if it is washed and dried asap after use. A bigger problem with "cheap" tools is possible flimsiness. A cold ball of emulsion can be pretty stiff (depending on the recipe). I had the rivets holding the two parts together of one such snap on me. There are a lot of ways to shred emulsion, so if finding a heavy duty s.s. potato ricer is a problem, there are excellent and inexpensive options.

Andrew, "VCM"? I don't recognize that, but cool to be mentioned!

Renato: A bit of darkroom experience is way more useful than emulsion-making experience. Nobody has home-based emulsion making experience starting out. Even commercial emulsion chemists have to adapt to the d.i.y. scale. If you can find your way around a kitchen, at least enough not to starve, then you have more than enough skills. A basic emulsion is four ingredients, plus water. You can make it with a hand whisk and a pot of hot water. Coating your emulsion nicely is the biggest learning curve -- just like all the other alt processes. That does take a bit of practice.

Frank: There is a bromide paper recipe in Vol 1. It is very easy to make and almost identical to the earliest commercial papers. It should do nicely with bromoil (my personal plan for it is carbro), but that is only an educated guess. It doesn't have super-coating, and an emulsion hardener (I like glyoxal) is optional when using the paper for standard enlarging, but I would assume it's necessary for bromoil. I don't know how much. Figuring that out will take a bit of experimenting. Glyoxal-hardened paper holds up perfectly to 5-color gum prints. ( http://www.thelightfarm.com/Map/Silv...ergumPart1.htm ) That's as far as my personal experience goes at this point. I would dearly love for you to break ground on this. I'm planning on including other artists who have made substantive progress using emulsions for various techniques in Vol 2. Fingers crossed for you!

d

**Robert Brazile** · 16-Nov-2015, 10:01

Originally Posted by RSalles

Denise,

How are you?

Do you think this is a book for a person who has a lot of background in analog photo, lab included, but zero of experience in emulsion making? Can I promise to myself I'll have a least a presentable work for a selected audience of my wife and daughter following the "recipes" in the book? Or I have to have some previous training?

Regards,

Renato

Hi Renato,

Not to speak for Denise, but the book is very good (I have it) and, having taken the dry plate workshop at Eastman House, I believe that you will find you absolutely can do it without more training than you've already had in lab work. Just follow the directions carefully the first time -- save variations for after you've had some success -- and I think you'll find it all pretty straightforward.

Robert