Software For Wet Plate Look

[theBDT]

So when someone refers at an alternative process and asks how to do it with a plug-in, there's going to be a bit of ribbing. Not unlike someone walking into a fine restaraunt and asking the chef how to cook that food in a microwave.

If someone goes into a five-star restaurant asking about microwaves, they do indeed deserve scorn. If a jackass gives the local greasy spoon short order cook grief for using a microwave, it's a different situation. Sure, digital is the "greasy spoon" in my analogy. I love me a late-night greasy spoon as much as I do a five-star course... they're different feelings.

[jnantz]

thanks don !

---
kent
getting your film to look a certain way has a lot to do
with how you expose it ( in what ) and how you process it ( in what )
it isn't much photoshop but knowing how your materials react in certain
situations.

john

[Marko]

Imagine if someone wandered into the darkroom sub-forum and asked "how can I get my silver prints to look more like inkjet prints?", which would be the analogy to what's going on here.

Except that this is the exact opposite case. Someone - quite a few of them, actually - just walked into a Digital Processing sub-forum and started lecturing the OP what he should do instead of digital! Even to the point of telling him it can't be done (nonsense) and to go away (no, that was not one of the moderators )!

And except that this is not a darkroom forum, this is the Large Format Photography forum.

I think it's more a natural reaction from people who have invested considerable time, money, energy, and intellectual effort into mastering an authentic historic process, then are asked, "how can I do that with a digital plug-in?"

That's great - I would LOVE to hear and learn from them about the processes they mastered! I just don't want to hear them ranting about the topic they evidently know very little about, if anything at all. Especially if they chip in without being asked.

Natural reaction? Yeah, just like the people who overhear a phone conversation and immediately feel compelled to jump in and interrupt.

BTW, many of us don't deliberately choose this sub-forum or that, but simple scroll through the "new posts" since our last visit. And is it so surprising that a wet plate photographer or two would would open a post with "wet plate" in the title?

If you can see the title of the thread, what prevents you from seeing the title of the section? Or even the "software" part of it, right before the "wet plate"?

No offense meant to the OP, but I feel the great disappointment in digital photography is that rather than being the new medium that it is, it so often is used to imitate what it isn't. Digital wet plate, digital zone system, digital imitation soft-focus, digital plug-ins to imitate this film or that... So when someone refers to a hand-crafted alternative process and asks how to "get that look" with a digital plug-in, there's going to be a bit of ribbing.

A bit of ribbing? What exactly makes you guys feel being entitled to rib others??

No offense to the Ludditte crowd, but what's wrong with APUG, are they down or something? It's their founding mission statement! Go take your bleating about digital-this and analog-that there, that's where it belongs. I don't come here to play a therapist and soothe someone's disappointments and frustrations, but to talk about photography, traditional, digital or alternative alike.

[Marko]

All being said, it would be really nice if the real moderators would consider treating this ad-hoc moderation-by-bullying as a hybrid between politics and religion...

[Marizu]

There are a number of factors that give a wet plate its distinctive look.

I suspect that some can be approximated (to some extent) in software but others are more organic in nature.
As previously mentioned, the orthochromatic response of the substrate is one issue which you could take a stab at in software.
Due to the slow response of the collodion, portraits are usually shot wide open with exposures between 3 and 60 seconds. You could probably try this with lowish light or ND's. You will get movement. Embrace it.

The more organic and characteristic elements of the plate come from the manual nature of the collodion pour, the sensitisation and the developer pour. I can't really think of a good way to approximate these but I have seen some white exposed, developed plates on Flickr that you can use to merge into your image using Photoshop to give you that look. In this case, you will only have a number of fixed ones to work with. In reality, every single plate is different which is a true beauty of the process.

If you have not had the opportunity to do so, I would encourage you to look at some genuine plates. You may not be aware, but the scans that we view on our monitors contain but a small amount of the ethereal beauty reflected from the actual plate.
No software can approximate the three dimensional magic and romance of a shimmering figure trapped within the blackened glass and the satisfaction that your alchemy has brought it into being.

[Fred L]

I don't do wet plate but +10 ^

[eddie]

Wow! Super defensive digital sub forum posters.

Mark said it better than I could.

Seems to me that "you" digital sub forum people are a bit itchy on the trigger. Now you have posted repeatedly about my take on the OP idea. Why not instead move along and try and provide a solution to the OP question ( obviously mine was not to be included into This sub forum, what was I thinking *gasp*) instead of hammering on me? Oh yeah! You have no solution, offer him no ideas, and are just improving your post count brow beating me over one of my statements you did not agree with.

I await the results of the plug in representation. Should be good..... I hope..... Cause what if it is not achieved? If it is not done then does that mean it is not possible *gasp* or does it mean that no one wants to spend the man hours working it out for whatever reason?

I will return to the other sub forums where the tongue thrashing is a bit slower in coming. Too defensive over here for me....... But sounds like a GREAT place to come back and troll in .......

[eddie]

Oh! So I am not totally ridiculed by the few eeerrrrrr I mean the two.....

A short cut may be to find or buy a imageless wet plate that had the distinctive " wet plate look" such as the flow marks or delevoper lines and scan this plate in as a base and then combine your negative with the scan of the plate.

Maybe q few different back grounds could be used. I know that having the same basic look may get old fast but it would do what u are asking in a pinch.

Would you like me to send u a few plates to scan and play with to see what you could do? Maybe you could save the artifacts you like from various plates and combine or layer them onto future images. Saving enough of them would eventually enable u to "build" or create an image with no negative. Just saved bits. Oh! Layering and opacity combined creatively would lend itself to the look you want as at times wet plate artifacts sometimes look as if they are suspended ALmost 3D

Something else that may help is 1st seeing a plate in person. This would allow u to possibly apply a digital manipulation u already know to get that " wet plate" look

Eddie

[Mark Sawyer]

All being said, it would be really nice if the real moderators would consider treating this ad-hoc moderation-by-bullying as a hybrid between politics and religion...

My apologies if I came across as "bullying". I didn't mean to physically threaten anyone. An interesting concept, though, that discussing the differences between alt processes and digital simulations of them is a hybrid of religion and politics.

That's great - I would LOVE to hear and learn from them about the processes they mastered! I just don't want to hear them ranting about the topic they evidently know very little about, if anything at all. Especially if they chip in without being asked.

Actually, I'm a photography teacher, and my course content is around 75% digital, 25% analog. But I'll bear in mind that I shouldn't say anything without prior permission!

A bit of ribbing? What exactly makes you guys feel being entitled to rib others??

No offense to the Ludditte crowd... Go take your bleating about digital-this and analog-that there, that's where it belongs. I don't come here to play a therapist and soothe someone's disappointments and frustrations...

We'll try to follow your more civilized example... certainly no ribbing there!

But we've gone on about this too long... I'll give Marko the last word about how horrible we are.

[Mark Sawyer]

A short cut may be to find or buy a imageless wet plate that had the distinctive " wet plate look" such as the flow marks or delevoper lines and scan this plate in as a base and then combine your negative with the scan of the plate.

Nick Brandt does something similar to this; he works on 6x7 film and adds artifacts digitally: