Emulsion dry plates

[MarkoRantanen]

I have made my own emulsion dry plates. Their sensitivity is about ISO3. How can they be made more sensitive? I don’t want to vaporize mercury but what are the other ways? It would be great to have a few more stops...

[jnantz]

if you go http://thelightfarm.com there is a ton of information there about boosting iso of hand crafted emulsion. Denise's book is available on blurb too https://www.blurb.com/b/6465389-the-light-farm
and it has recipes and techniques you can do to increase sensitivity.

good luck!
John

[MarkoRantanen]

if you go http://thelightfarm.com there is a ton of information there about boosting iso of hand crafted emulsion. Denise's book is available on blurb too https://www.blurb.com/b/6465389-the-light-farm
and it has recipes and techniques you can do to increase sensitivity.

good luck!
John

Thank you so much!

[jnantz]

Thank you su much!

I hope that was helpful, i currently use a really slow emulsion recipe from thelighfarm 's archives. it's made with sea water and silver and gelatin and that is about it. it's unwashed so I don't have to deal with noodling and washing it (so I coat it on paper). I've made other faster emulsions one by accident when I put a minuscule amount of dilute spent paper developer (d72/dektol ) in as a "final" thinking it was used spent dilute sodium thiosulfate (unmarked bottles whoops!) and the emulsion was kind of foggy but like iso 50, ... what used to take like 5 minutes with objects put on the coated paper in direct sun to make a photogram took like 15 seconds and I had to put the objects on the reverse side of the paper (through the back of the paper ) I am guessing the ISO I didn't do a formal analysis to see what it actually was and that was about 4 years ago ..I haven't done that again but it was fun. BTW the book I included as a link I believe Denise still has as a preview if you want to poke around, I bought a copy, it's the most valuable book I own! ( I have the "silver gelatin emulsion" book published 20+ years ago, that book has recipes some say are riddled with mistakes, all of the light farm recipes are tried and true and work wonderfully ) ... have fun!
John

[domaz]

Keep an eye on the workshops page of the George Eastman museum they occasionally have an "Advanced Dry Plate" workshop. I know that Nick Brandreth, who does the workshops now has done dry plate's as high as ISO 25.

[MarkoRantanen]

Keep an eye on the workshops page of the George Eastman museum they occasionally have an "Advanced Dry Plate" workshop. I know that Nick Brandreth, who does the workshops now has done dry plate's as high as ISO 25.

I saw the workshop announcement but I am traveling then and I cannot attend.