How can I transfer a photograph on to glass? I am a stained glass artist, and I know there was a form of photography that did this. Can anyone tell me how? Would I use the negative directly to the glass? Thanks.
How can I transfer a photograph on to glass? I am a stained glass artist, and I know there was a form of photography that did this. Can anyone tell me how? Would I use the negative directly to the glass? Thanks.
If I'm not mistaken, the glass was the negative itself. The glass would be coated with a thin film of emulsion and used as a normal piece of sheet film, albeit with a far longer exposure time. The reason they used glass was, I believe, in order to have a material that would allow light to pass through for the enlargement process, until the development of modern film. It was also far sharper than early film as well.
I can think of two ways to transfer the picture: coat the glass with an emulsion and make it the positive, or use laser etching. Of course, my experience in these matters is limited, so I could be completely missing something here.
Hope this helps in some small way.
hi lois
you can purchase a liquid emulsion and coat the glass with it. you can enlarge right onto a piece of glass using an enlarger and regular photo-chemistry, or you can put the glass "in camera" as a dry plate . it might take a while tries to get it right. subbing the glass is the hard part. it requires you to clean the glass ( so water sheens off of it ) and then treat it with a substance like gelatin or poly urethane so the liquid emulsion has something to bind to.
mark pendersen gives great " step by step " instructions here:
www.alternativephotography.com/process_dryplate.html
whether you are using the glass in the camera or to print on, it is pretty much the same thing ...
good luck!
The suggestions given so far are excellent.
If you have some dollars to justify experimentation, you might buy out that supply of Aviophot glass negative material that www.surplusshed.com has for sale. However, it looks like opaque white which I'd guess is rather limiting for stained-glass work.
I have a case of very old opaque, white glass negative material of about 3.25" X 4.5" size and darned if I know what it was originally for. It is of 'contact' speed. When I lived in Europe one would often see photographic prints done on the material, framed and embedded in gravestones.
If you think you might like to try it (recalling that it is opaque white), touch base with me by email and I will send you a sample.
I'm not sure what you want to do with this. First, what size are you looking to have the final image on glass and what size is your original? Color or monochrome?
You might be able to contact the image onto a technical glass plate negative material such as TMAX 100 plate. (I believe these are still made but there are also some russian plates still made.)
It may be easiest to enlarge onto glass sheets coated with commercial liquid emulsion. I think a silane treatment would probably work best as a subbing for the glass before application of the emulsion.
The wetplate collodion process is another option as Dan has mentioned, but it takes an investment to learn and requires some chemicals that need special handling and which can be very dangerous. The process involves ethyl ether and iodized collodion which have explosive vapors. It also utilizes cadmium salts and some other chemicals that can be very dangerous. For example, potassium cyanide is used as a fixer by many wetplate artists and you don't want to be careless with that lethal compound.
If you only need a one-time image you may be better off trying to hire the work out rather than sinking a lot of time and money into what can be one of the most difficult things to do photographically.
You might also investigate duplicating the image to a certain size photographically and then using something like a photopolymer to get the image onto glass at that point.
Again, where are you starting and what size do you need the final image? Do you want it continuous tone or more like a poster?
Hi
Another idea would be to make a B/W transparency and mount it on the glass. There are crystal clear adhesives used by professional labs to mount prints to clear acrylic.
Richard
T-Max 100 glass plates were discontinued in 2002, and Kodak has sold off or scrapped the machinery that was capable of coating on glass. There are, AFAIK, only two coating lines in the world still capable of coating on glass: Ilford, and Slavich (in Ukraine, I think). Ilford hasn't run a glass plate in quite a few years, but still have the capability and have talked about making a run of plates (probably FP4+ or Delta 100 emulsion in 4x5 size for sale to the astronomical and scientific community); Slavich makes a run of 9x12 cm plates every year or so, and last I heard you could still buy them from Retro Photo in UK -- but beware; they're about $100 for a box of a dozen, plus shipping.
If you just want an image on glass, the above suggestions regarding liquid emulsion are the best way to go; after suitable subbing, coat the glass, let the coating cool and harden, and then enlarge or contact print to the glass as if it were (heavy, fragile, and extremely stiff) photographic paper. At least one liquid emulsion even has variable contrast usable with standard contrast control filters.
If a contact print at arm's length is too small to see, you need a bigger camera. :D
Thanks everyone. Very helpful information. I have aquired an enlarger and I will coat the glass with emultion and directly expose onto the glass. Expose as if I were using paper and I'll see what comes of it. I really appreciate all answers to my question. Lois.
Hello Lois,
A method that was quite popular at one time consisted of taking a print made on albumen paper and fixing this to a sheet of glass. I'm not quite sure what was used to fix the print to the glass, but as egg white was often used for subbing, maybe the print was just wetted and the egg white (albumen) bonded to the glass.
After the print was firmly stuck to the glass the paper was wetted thoroughly and carefully rubbed away, leaving just the albumen layer containing the image stuck to the glass. The albumen layer was then coloured, either directly (I think) or by colouring layers of translucent paper and sandwiching the whole lot together. Quite large pictures were produced in this way.
Another old method was the opaline. Albumen or POP prints were wetted and squeegeed onto glass, often bevel cut and with mirrored edges or frames, which were then used as small paperweights or similar.
Yet another method involved putting or transferring a layer containing the silver image (eg an exposed collodion layer) onto a ceramic, and firing it at high temperature. The silver salts directly fused to the ceramic. A lot of old cemeteries have photos on tombstones of the departed made like this.
Regards,
Neil.
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