Wet Plate for Architectural & Portrait

[jnantz]

I suspect the cost of farming out the optical enlargements will be the biggest obstacle. How many technicians-for-hire do you know who can make big enlargements from 5x7 glass negatives??

I used to, and sometimes bigger plates, but I stopped because the enlarger head put so much stress on the plates I thought they would chip and break. so I contacted printed the glass plates after that. and now, thankfully we live in the modern age where I can plop a plate on a scanner, or it's physical print on a scanner and make an enlargement if I want. if enlarging, get negative carriers specific for plates ( solar used to have glass negative carriers in a big drawer that pulled out and they work great ) because the mass of the enlarger head will put stress on a rigid carrier that does not overlap the edge of the plate. another added benefit is the nuance of tonality of a plate is sometimes lost in the enlargement but captured when scanning .. These weren't collodion plates but dry plates .. window pane glass. I haven't rephotographed plates with a camera instead of scanning, but im sure that would work too.

OP. you should also look into Studio Q ( Quinn Jacobson ), he is also a collodion master and I know he's given classes all over.

have fun with your new adventure!
John

[Alan Townsend]

Don't worry, I'm human... I see I wasn't clear with my questions though!

We're just going to have a firm to enlarge them...

What I wanted to know about was recommendations for Camera and Lens types for Wet Plate "architectural" work... and if my ideas for a Portrait setup were practical... or if there was a camera / lens combination that could work well for both...

At present I'm leaning towards a dedicated portrait wet plate camera, and a dedicated "out on the town" wet plate camera that probably has a shutter and a slider for Fstops... any suggestions? Thanks again!

I suggest putting a decent digital camera inside a box that appears to be an antique portrait camera, and tell everyone it's a wet plate. You could even use plates of glass any size you like and pancake syrup to pretend your coating the plates. You could embellish the performance as much as you like for your audience, while economizing to the max.
OSHA requirements and your insurance underwriters will also appreciate the reduced liability and regulations from lack of collodion and other regulated and or flammable products in your operation.

In your post production, you can make them look as old as you like by using filters or other means. It's always easier to make sharp photos look fuzzy or scratched up than to make scratched up or fuzzy look sharp and perfect. Well, now with AI I guess not so hard to do. This also helps you make distorted and scratched up people look better, too.

This is the easiest and most profitable way to do your wet plate studio. At least you will have a decent digital camera left after your wet plate business fails. Next, you could pretend your aliens from another dimension and make 3d holographic portraits using the same equipment. Cavemen chipping granite slabs with chisels could be done using 3d printed rocks.

Pardon my having fun with this idea. Not sure how profitable this will be, but don't understand the market. I believe a fake wet plate studio could be more profitable than a real one, a lot easier, and much more fun. Just imagine the possibilities.

I am not a robot

[Wesito]

I suggest putting a decent digital camera inside a box that appears to be an antique portrait camera, and tell everyone it's a wet plate. You could even use plates of glass any size you like and pancake syrup to pretend your coating the plates. You could embellish the performance as much as you like for your audience, while economizing to the max.
OSHA requirements and your insurance underwriters will also appreciate the reduced liability and regulations from lack of collodion and other regulated and or flammable products in your operation.

In your post production, you can make them look as old as you like by using filters or other means. It's always easier to make sharp photos look fuzzy or scratched up than to make scratched up or fuzzy look sharp and perfect. Well, now with AI I guess not so hard to do. This also helps you make distorted and scratched up people look better, too.

This is the easiest and most profitable way to do your wet plate studio. At least you will have a decent digital camera left after your wet plate business fails. Next, you could pretend your aliens from another dimension and make 3d holographic portraits using the same equipment. Cavemen chipping granite slabs with chisels could be done using 3d printed rocks.

Pardon my having fun with this idea. Not sure how profitable this will be, but don't understand the market. I believe a fake wet plate studio could be more profitable than a real one, a lot easier, and much more fun. Just imagine the possibilities.

I am not a robot

What you are is an asshole...

[paulbarden]

Not sure how profitable this will be, but don't understand the market. I believe a fake wet plate studio could be more profitable than a real one, a lot easier, and much more fun. Just imagine the possibilities.

Alan, I know scores of people who operate a very profitable wet plate portraiture studio. I don't think it's very helpful to suggest making fake tintypes, especially since you've stated that you don't have any idea what is happening in the wet plate portraiture market (believe me, it's a booming market).
The business model the OP is proposing is very viable, assuming they learn the technique properly and develop skill with it, and that they have a genuine desire to make the business work. As I say, I know plenty of people who operate tintype portrait studios and they are BUSY people, making a living doing it.

I find the whole "fake tintype" concept to be disingenuous and likely to be viewed by potential clients as a very poor alternative to the real deal. Imagine someone on this forum suggesting using AI/Photoshop fakery to emulate a traditional portraiture technique?! Honestly.

What you are is an asshole...

Yeah, well - I was trying to phrase it more politely, but yes.

[Alan Townsend]

What you are is an asshole...

I think you should try to develop a sense of humor and not take things so seriously.

[paulbarden]

I think you should try to develop a sense of humor and not take things so seriously.

It seems to me that if someone is planning on building a business around the concept of wet plate portraiture and they are looking for advice on how best to do that, then they are very serious about their plans indeed, and frivolous "recommendations" are not useful. Suggesting that they just do the laziest thing possible and make fake tintypes is spectacularly unhelpful.
You're surprised that this suggestion rubbed the OP the wrong way??

[Alan Townsend]

I really thought this thread was a joke. The first posts related to it being a bot. I thought that was funny, and got a good laugh of of it. Back around 1973, I experimented with wet collodion long before it became popular at all. I even made my own nitrocellulose using nitric acid, salt peter, and cotton. Hence my mild interest in wet collodion. I completely gave up on this a few years later when I discovered ortho-litho film, which gives a very similar look without the fuss and bother and with greatly superior orthochromatic response. Historical side note: wet collodion continued to be used in the printing industry for half tones through the 1940's when ortho-litho film fully replaced it.

The only reason I can imagine today for using wet collodion is as historical reenactment. It wet collodion days, there were no enlargements digital or otherwise. Contact printed collodion on paper or albumen paper were about it. So now we have portrait studios using wet plates Frankenstined with later digital and optical processes? This makes no logical sense whatsoever. So, I guess it's okay to fake the historic retouching and printing processes with a genuine wet plate negative? Sorry that I don`t see any market. Most of the art was retouching the numerous pimples and blemishes that show up so badly with color blind emulsions. To me, a 1/2 non-historic process is fake, so fully fake isn't very far removed. Thus my literary license for my comment I get called names for. It was funny.

More people read this forum than just the OP's. Information is for everybody and the purpose of a forum. I remain amazed that people are using inferior materials (wet collodion) because they are hand made but then modernizing (faking) the results with commercial products that are mass-produced. Personally, my photography is all done using manufactured film but printed using hand-made materials without computer aids. This works better for me and is more historically correct for about 1880 on.

[Tin Can]

I have 100 NOS Plates circa 1890

When they are gone

I have a pile of NOS from this decade

Let our people go!

[Tim Meisburger]

The enlarger was invented in 1843. Google it.

[Alan Townsend]

The enlarger was invented in 1843. Google it.

That would have been a so-called enlarging camera for Daguerreotypes. Enlarging papers did not exist commercially until much later. I don't have the date, but it was after the wet collodian era (about 1850-1880 ish). By roughly 1890 electric electric enlargers were in common use. There were "solar cameras" in use the the collodion era, but were not very common. Condenser lenses focused the sun through negatives that would often melt. Some used a heliostat to track the sun as a light source automatically. Others were fixed cameras that were manually pointed at the sun as it moved across the sky. The printing papers were far too slow otherwise. Today, there are those who experiment with high powered COB UV led light for "alternate process" use, which were the technology at that time rather than alternates. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlarger