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Thread: Studio/set lighting for Tintype

  1. #11

    Join Date
    Aug 2001
    Location
    VA
    Posts
    113

    Studio/set lighting for Tintype

    kthompson,

    I actually have some of those moles from one of the NC manufacturers. I believe that they also made use of ceiling mounted Mole 2k softlights and 407 1k's. My current hot light kit is all used moles from NC (2-molequartz, 1-407 1k, 1 2k softlight) The bigger lights were dusty and well used, but they work fine.

  2. #12

    Join Date
    Mar 2004
    Posts
    650

    Studio/set lighting for Tintype

    I agree that mercury vapor lighting would probably be the best bet, but your observation that MV lighting should be watt-for-watt as effective as sunlight may fall a little short, if you are trying to compare the power consumption of a fixture to the sunlight power of 1.3 KW/meter^2. Mercury vapor lights are good, but not that good: the bulbs get really hot, and the ballasts dump a fair amount of heat as well. The fixture draws a good bit more power from the power line than it radiates as light. It would be nice if someone with a good, handy, physics reference could tell us what the actual power of sunlight was in the blue-to-long UV part of the spectrum. Of course, then we would need the corresponding number for a candidate mercury lamp!

    I had occasion to change the lamp in a mercury-vapor yard light a few months ago, and the package (or fixture---I forget which) made reference to the UV hazard if the outer envelope were broken. I took this to mean that the envelope had a UV-filtering function, as well as protecting the high voltage and providing thermal insulation for the bulb capsule. Presumably, a tanning lamp would be engineered with only short-UV filtration.

    I took the liberty of looking up some earlier posts regarding your Rockland tintype efforts, and it occurs to me that the emulsion may be blue-sensitive in the sense that enlarging paper is blue-sensitive, in which case a bank of cool-white fluorescent tubes might constitute a viable option (as well as emulating the skylight illumination of a Victorian era studio). The iron-based photo processes really do need UV for exposure, but even Velox and Azo papers were once advertised as "gaslight" papers, meaning that they were broad enough in sensitivity to be exposed by light sources other than sunlight.

    At any rate, I wish you luck and look forward to seeing the results some day.

  3. #13

    Studio/set lighting for Tintype

    Sorry Harold if I gave the wrong impression about efficiency.

    I was NOT refering to the overall efficiency of the conversion of electrical energy to illumination.

    I used the term "effective" in refering to exposing a blue-sensitive emulsion. E.g. direct sunlight represents a broad-spectrum illumination intensity of about 1.3KW per square meter. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v181/calamityjanecanary/solar_spect_at_earth.gif

    1.3KW per square meter of any light that includes the blue and UV spectrum will give the same exposre. However, all radiation that falls outside of the film's sensitivity range is waste.

    For example, I considered Quartz Halogen but it's spectrum is very broad (which is why we see it as white). Mercury vapour, on the other hand, has most of it's radiation in wavelengths I can use http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v181/calamityjanecanary/plMVspectrum.gif

    I don't feel ambitious enough to go thru the whole efficiency calculations but it seems illogical to put energy into generating wavelengths I don't need.

    http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v181/calamityjanecanary/VisSpec.gif

  4. #14

    Join Date
    Jan 2001
    Posts
    522

    Studio/set lighting for Tintype

    Hey Mike--hmm...well, used to be like a half dozen really large studios in High Point--Thomasville--Hickory area, with Alderman's being the largest. Actually I guess it was the largest studio in the world at one time. They had something like 20+ full time staff shooters and maybe 300 something employees total, with set builders, lab techs, retouchers etc. They made their own cameras at times, and shot up to 11x14 and larger. Norlings was another big studio, but it's gone now I think. My boss worked there for awhile...

    Omega, Tribuzio, Atantic--were other studios, and then there were numerous small studios that popped up with seasonal workers during the market period only, when they shoot practically 24/7 for 2 weeks or so. I thnk most of them are going digital now, but I'm not really sure--it's been about 15 yrs since I've been over there. I have heard from interns we've had where I work, that some of them still shoot 8x10 chrome film and still use retouchers, because the clients are more comfortable with it.

    The interesting thing besides the scale and the lighting of the studios, is that the catalogs were produced by longroll contact printers. They take that big piece of film and contact print it, knock off a zillion prints and color correct back to the furniture right in the lab. They burn in titles on the prints, and round the corners and bind them together. They used to employ all these retouchers in the area, who'd work either in the studios or at home--they made good money on the side doing this work. They did washes etc for color correction as well.

    The shooting--these guys would shoot a b/w neg as a proof for a shot, and then have the lab run it and then they'd burn the film, shooting sometimes just one chrome.My boss knows a guy who worked at Norlings, and told a funny story about his first day on the job. They put him on a set and told him to light it, and he asked for a meter. They said forget it--shoot it. So, he lights the thing and goes back to the lab, asks what a typical exposure is, and somehow manages to shoot a halfway decent chrome. He worked there for about 5 years and never used a light meter....

    This would be the kind of thing that some magazine like View Camera should do an article on, because Alderman's is probably on the last big studios around like this and tghe furniture market is in a slow decline unfortunately in NC. Pretty soon those places willbe all digital or just gone and all the jobs will go with them.

  5. #15

    Studio/set lighting for Tintype

    One of the problems of orthochromatic films based upon silver nitrate with iodine and bromide salts (ie: tintypes) is that their sensitivity is not a solid line or curve, that is they have, depending upon the mix, high peaks and low valleys of sensitivity between two points. Basically in both tintypes and daguerreotypes, the more different silver salts which are use, the more complete or even the sensitivity range between two points. In the 1840s it was discovered that fuming daguerreotype plates in bromine or chlorine after the iodine made them "faster". This was not because it raised their sensitivity to all light, but rather to specific wave lengths.

    There is no way of knowing, other than experimentation, if the patterns of color sensitivity of your plates will match the odd patterns of MV lights. This is why, as far as I know, everybody who uses studio lighting with collodion or daguerreotypes uses daylight, 5500k balanced florescent lights, or strobe. Jerry Spangnoli, who makes all of Chuck Close's daguerreotypes, uses absurdly powerful strobes, while the Ostermans use large banks of florescents.

  6. #16

    Studio/set lighting for Tintype

    No one has mentioned HMIs. They are as close to continuous daylight as you can buy. I think a 650W HMI might do the trick for a single light source and is very portable. But its bright and hot for the subject, like all high powered continuous lighting, and expensive as well.

    Is there a reason why you can't use lots of flash power? I must have missed the explanation for this. Three or four big flash heads aimed through a silk would sure make a big powerful light source.

  7. #17

    Studio/set lighting for Tintype

    When I built my first old-fashioned LF camera, I thought it would be neat to make a real old fashioned flash so I did a bunch of research on flash powder.

    When I found how how dangerous that stuff is, I decided to stick to reloading Blackpowder, shooting my cannon, playing in traffic, and other SAFE activities!

    The tintype emulsion is so slow that it has almost no flash response.

    I've received a very interesting e-mail on the subject of illumination and spectral sensitivity and have decided to go with banks of blue-rich fluorescent tubes. There are some with colour temperatures above 5000K and it is more economical than using more specialized lamps.

    Thanks for all the ideas fellas (and gals).

  8. #18

    Studio/set lighting for Tintype

    Update:

    I have been playing with metering and lighting for tintypes and have made some progress (based on the wisdom ya'll have shared).

    First thing I did was find a filter for my spotmeter that matched the response of the tintype emulsion. With the right filter, I can now meter exposures from sunlight (f16@1/2) down to normal indoor fluorescent lighting (typically around 1 Minute at f8).

    After researching the spectrum and cost of various lights, I determined that "daylight" fluorescent tubes give me the most useful light per dollar so I put together a bank of four 2-lamp fixtures. At 4 feet distance, these give me an exposure of 1 Second at f4 - getting closer.

    I have four camp-on lamps with parabolic reflectors so I am going to try re-bulbing them, probably with mercury vapour.

    I'm trying to get to F8 @ 1/2 and stay under the 15 Amps available from a single outlet (which is likely to be the maximum power avaiable to me on-site).

    The experimentation continues . . .

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