I put a post over on APUG, Alternate Processes.
http://www.apug.org/forums/showthread.php?p=150375#post150375
I saw some "tintypes" unlike anything I have seen before and I'd like to figure out how they were made.
I'll try to scan one next week and post the image.
Any ideas what the process may have been?
CJ,
I think you were actually looking at standard wetplate collodion ferrotypes based on your description on the alt-process board. ( I wrote a lengthy response yesterday to your post but my computer froze and crashed when I tried to open too many windows in order to cut and paste URLs for you and that PO'd me so much I didn't redo it immediately.)
I think the dryplate processes were much more difficult to achieve than the wetplate processes of that era if you were an individual attempting to make the emulsions. Dryplate was the thing once it was commercially available, but for an individual of the time, wetplate was presumably simpler to make and also different in terms of speed. Today dryplates are still available but these are primarily scientific plates rather than pictorial, although I believe Kodak still manufactures TMAX 100 glass plates. There is also a Russian source for orthochromatic plates. All the modern dryplates are prohibitively expensive. Astronomers and other scientists who need a greater degree of dimensional stability than films offer shoot glass plates in their research.
On the tintypes you saw, you mentioned brushmarks which I think may simply be an artifact of the Japaning process (using a brush-applied and baked ashphaltum layer to blacken the plate) as opposed to a brushed-on emulsion such as the Rockland product you are currently using to simulate the true ferrotype process. OTOH, The brightness you mention may have resulted from the use of potassium cyanide as the fixing agent. It supposedly gives a brighter image with improved contrast in less time than sodium thiosulphate. Your mention of the scalloping of the edge of the emulsion with one part apparently thicker also leads me to believe you were looking at a poured wetplate emulsion. Check the poured wetplate images of the photographers listed below to see if they have a similar look.
I think the bottom line is if you want the precise look of a tintype, you will have to actually do wetplate collodion. You can probably delay doing wetplate for awhile, but look what happened once you built your first dinky 4x5 camera. Next thing you know you are making pseudo-tintypes and spending your livelihood on eBay acquiring ever larger format cameras and lenses. Where does it all end? Might as well take the plunge now and get it over with. That way we could also compare notes as I am currently getting into the wetplate process, buidling my own full plate wetplate camera for it, and accumulating old portrait lenses off eBay to add to my ever-increasing inventory of ancient glass.
To get an idea of the quality one can achieve with wetplate, Google people like Robert Maxwell, Michael Mazzeo, Tom Baril, Luther Gerlach, Sally Mann, Quinn Jacobson, France Scully and Mark Osterman, and also Kerik Kouklis from the alt list. Of course there are many reenactors such as Robert Szabo and Will Dunnaway (sp?) who also do quality work, but you are aware of those individuals based on your other post. Robert hosts the online CW Reenactors Forum and Quinn hosts the other Wetplate Collodion Forum.
John Coffer has a wetplate manual called "The Doer's Guide"for $50 that is considered the Bible for the process amongst the reenactor crowd. I recently purchased a copy and it is a good investment if you want to learn the wetplate processes. John is linked on the Reenactors' Forum and must be contacted via snail mail (no telephone or email). There are also a few online texts including Towler's "Silver Sunbeam", Monckhoven's Treatise on Photography, and Carey Lea's text all from the wetplate era. Googling for each of these sources including Coffer will turn up a wealth of information, some of which may give you some leads as to early dryplate processes and the problems associated with those early plates. John Coffer was also the subject of a recent online article this week (on wired.com I believe). He also holds workshops on his farm in NY and everything I've read about them suggests it is the place to learn wetplate collodion from the modern master. I believe he is offering a workshop in July.
I'm also learning the process (have yet to make my first plate, but have accumulated 95% of the supplies needed) and I have enrolled in a workshop with Michael Mazzeo at Peters' Valley Craft Center in New Jersey in early August. The PVCC also has another workshop listed specifically for tintypes. Scully and Osterman also hold workshops periodically in Rochester NY and elsewhere. Several of the reenactors offer private tutorials on the wetplate processes. Links found on the CW Reenactors' Forum will provide you with a tremendous resource.
Hope some of this helps.
Thanks Joe!
I have a letter all ready to go off to John Coffer ;-)
Of all of the photos I have looked at online, from all the various processes and photographers, I have never seen any with such black blacks and white whites!
This is going to become an obscession, I know it :-(
CJ,
I just thought of something else. Was the image actually a white image on a mirrorlike surface under glass and the black resulting from viewing the picture against a black or dark background reflected in the mirror? (As in a Union Case with a black velvet on one side of the case.) Tilting the image to and fro so a different toned background was reflected in the image would cause it to visually reverse from a positive to negative. If so, it was most likely a daguerreotype. I can't think of any other direct positive process on a metal plate from that era other than tintypes and daguerreotypes although perhaps their was one. Dags are marvelous..."The Mirror With a Memory"
Nope, no glass.
It looked 100% tintype except for the superb image quality.
Calamity -
it could be an ambrotype, which is essentially a tintype on glass...
Another person to check out for information on doing tintypes/ambrotypes/wet-plate collodion is Ron Gibson, who has his studio in Gettysburg, PA. He was a presenter at the Large Format Photography Conference this year.
Another good book on how to do it is Coming In To Focus, by John Barnier. It is an Alt-Process bible, with everything from Becquerel-developed Daguerrotypes to albumen, salt, platinum/palladium, Kallitype, Ziatype, Van Dyk, to cyanotype.
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