Wet Plate Collodion questions answered here.

Thanks again and I will definitely study those videos. As far as the "passport photo" I actually wish I had the option of focusing at closer distances with this camera/lens, in addition to what you are suggesting- showing more environment and interesting compositions. As to lighting, well, I've been a photojournalist and then commercial photographer over the expanse of 40+ years. Open shade, for now, seems like a good choice to keep things relatively consistent but, yes, not especially interesting. Many thanks~ Blake

Dear collodion competence team,

I´m clueless, two days before, the chems worked as intended, today - under the same conditions 25°C, clear sky, early afternoon, 3-4 seconds at f16 - the results were quite strange.

A more or less well exposed image, developed for 15sec, is showing very dark skin tone colors while everything else is as usual.
There is also a silver metallic effect in the blacks.

Here are examples of today:

https://up.picr.de/49550034kq.jpeg

https://up.picr.de/49550036gl.jpeg

While last Sunday the same chems and procedures lead to these results:

https://up.picr.de/49543774ds.jpeg

https://up.picr.de/49543768qm.jpeg

Anything I should do to my silver bath?

Is there perhaps a filter on the lens? Or maybe the gentleman has a remarkably high amount of red pigmentation or is a UV sponge.


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Probably a UV sponge. Gained UV resilience over decades as a ski & windsurf instructor. Current skin color is normal typical light spring teint of a formerly blond gringo.

Someone in another corner of the internet already assumed UV-protective skin care, but never used any. At least not that week.

The lens is a slightly yellow-reddish coated Industar-37 300mm f4.5. Sure, the coating isn´t ideal for wet plate, rather than for contrasty b/w film, but I had no issues so far with it. It´s quite a nicely fast and sharp, while affordable lens for the 8x10"/18x24cm format.

There was also the assumption, that my probably contaminated dirty silver bath has evaporated a bit, while sitting in my car since the last to images were made, gaining density, losing sensitivity in the skin tones, resulting in precipitating silver in the blacks, too dry plate didn´t let it settle in the film during dev, probably too strong and long development, slight underexposure ...

Obviously at least partly a maintenance and weather issue I quickly need to sort out, since these shots were tests for a summer road trip with the wet gear.
How do I make this possible?

My current developer mix: 400ml water, 25ml glacial acid 99%, 40ml alcohol 99%, 12gr ferro-sulfate, 12gr sugar, 4gr potassium nitrate..

I was once told, the high alcohol ratio keeps the developer thin and avoids oily spots, the sugar acts as restrainer in hot weather and the potassium nitrate pushes the whites in warm tempered fix and wash baths. Am I mislead here?

How did the original 19th century dudes did it in a horse carriage during the hot summer? Not sure, if extra cooling is installable in the car at it´s current built-to-purpose design.

Any suggestions are highly appreciated.

Cheese

I expect your results are due to the man's skin tone, and the lighting. I don't think this is in any way a technical failure. That said, at 25C, you'd be wise to add more restrainer to your developer and maybe pare a few seconds off the development time. These appear to be slightly overdeveloped to me. (especially the first one, which appears to have some developed silver in the blacks)

Thank you, sir. Always appreciate your competent feedback.

Exposure by feel and memory is a witch, there might have been a half stop less sunlight that day and my manual shutter speeds may not be that consistent. Under the cooler lab conditions at my shed, extending developing time a bit to pull the exposure doesn´t break the boundaries of what is allowed, that quick. Maybe it were 20-25secs dev, waiting for something more to happen with the skin and quickly ran into over dev at these temperatures.

"add more restrainer" means more sugar?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AgNO3

"add more restrainer" means more sugar?

---

I'm not sure why you're using both acetic acid AND sugar in the developer - it's usually one or the other AFAIK. Acetic acid is typically used as the chemical restrainer and you want to add more of that if you need to hold back on development. (Sugar is a physical restrainer) But I expect that adding more of either will help.

Hot weather is a bit of a beat up IMO. The only thing I worry about when it's hot is a plate drying out between silver bath and development.

My developer recipe is recently this

100mL h20
2g iron
6mL alcohol
3.6mL acid
1g potassium nitrate

Develop for 30 seconds

No need for sugar

Seeing as the other subjects in the photos of the man are seemingly reasonably well exposed I can only assume the guy has abnormally high UV absorbent skin, or maybe a rare chance his skin tone, the collodion and your russian lens all disagree on a colour wavelength.


Edit: just saw the other replies

If you wanted to continue attempting to shoot your ultraviolet absorbent friend, you could try the employ of some reflectors to see if you can throw additional light on his curious complexion

I've never seen anyone soak up so much UV light. Mosquito's must hate him

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Gentlemen, thanks for taking the time to share your in depth wisdom.

I´m obviously lacking some basics, like knowing the distinction between "physical" and "chemical" restrainer. Started with a ready made kit, switched to DIY chems a few months ago and only fill up the chem beaker following Christmas cookie recipes. Thanks Paul, I'll dive into that soon. You've explained it so well, even I should catch up on it.

Thanks Alex for sharing your dev mix. Compared to mine, it´s much less of pretty everything. Am I developing full throttle with a pulled hand brake moving nowhere, but burning the clutch, so to speak? I'll definitely give your mix a try this weekend.

That´s the guy in his wrinkled and pale winter skin suit, shot with an uncoated 20"f6.3 on 13x18 glass with 2400ws Chinese flash in the "studio". Not very dark skinned in this case. Only selfie I´ve managed to stay in focus. The picture starting my questions here was shot by an experienced friend, while I took responsibility for the pouring and dev of my chems in my car. Don´t know, if mosquitos hate me, barely notice any. Always thought. it´s because of the smell.

https://up.picr.de/46948363ac.jpeg

The difference between your first example and the one in this post seems to be the lens. The industar lens has coating on it as far as I know. I'm not well knowledged enough to say for sure it's what caused the problem of the dark skin. From reading I think there are two different types of coating for the industar, one with a yellow coating and one with a blue coating. I know only because I recently purchased one for myself to use with my 5x7 camera.

Chris Morgan uses and enjoys one for wet plate.
There is always a physical or chemical explanation for things beyond just chalking it up to bad luck.

I was, until recently, using John Coffer's developer recipe for years which was

100mL water
4g iron
6mL alcohol
6mL acid
1g pot nitrate

Developing for 16 seconds

as I was shooting 8x10 and the larger pano plates I found the quick development time a little anxiety inducing to do swiftly with care. The slower developer time and more dilute recipe offered me time to draw my developer vessel more carefully across the edge of the plate and watch without haste to make sure I rock the developer evenly over the entire surface

paul knows a lot more than me so i'll bow out now.

Thanks Alex,

don´t low ball yourself. Few people have so much experience like you and share it so generously. I´ve learned a lot by just quietly reading your very informative tips over the years and like your pointed comments. I´m just too old or stupid to remember everything, when it´s needed. Please have patience.

The reddish Industar was an offer, I couldn´t refuse. In the traditional sense. It was sort of gifted in friendship for a favor and you don´t watch a gifted horse in it´s mouth. I know about the blueish ones and may fetch one, if I run into a nice deal. Nice sharp chunky lump of glass.

BTW it´s certainly not Russian. Definitely Soviet, but may have been produced by a factory in Kiev, Ukraine. Which was the technical powerhouse for optics and aero in the former Soviet Union. The different logos on an Industar - a "brand" name for all commercially produced optics in the Soviet Union - tells, whether it was precisely put together and quality controlled by a graduated engineer in Kiev for the export market to be sold for hard currency (made on German tools, because it´s ZEISS Tessar design and the German factory was part of war reparations) or if it was produced by a vodka reeking Russian in the Siberian woods for the domestic socialist market. One better avoids the latter, even though there seem to have been time slots, where functional alcoholics performed pretty well, too. The quality volatility of their glass batches seems to have been the bigger issue.

Learned this from the historically and technically very interesting write up by Arne Croell on Eastern Block large format lenses. Extensive chart of pretty everything produced for LF between 1945 and 1991. The publications on his website reg LF optics are all very interesting:

https://www.arnecroell.com/eastern-block-new.pdf


I´ll test your Coffer dev, too. Thanks for sharing it.
A bit busy, but will report asap about my further tests and struggles. Don't want to mess up my road trip by being unprepared.
I too like a slow and controllable development with lots of time to guess "is this what I should aim for?" lacking the experience of frequently doing it.

Thanks guys.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AgNO3

Thanks Alex,

don´t low ball yourself. Few people have so much experience like you and share it so generously. I´ve learned a lot by just quietly reading your very informative tips over the years and like your pointed comments. I´m just too old or stupid to remember everything, when it´s needed. Please have patience.

The reddish Industar was an offer, I couldn´t refuse. In the traditional sense. It was sort of gifted in friendship for a favor and you don´t watch a gifted horse in it´s mouth. I know about the blueish ones and may fetch one, if I run into a nice deal. Nice sharp chunky lump of glass.

BTW it´s certainly not Russian. Definitely Soviet, but may have been produced by a factory in Kiev, Ukraine. Which was the technical powerhouse for optics and aero in the former Soviet Union. The different logos on an Industar - a "brand" name for all commercially produced optics in the Soviet Union - tells, whether it was precisely put together and quality controlled by a graduated engineer in Kiev for the export market to be sold for hard currency (made on German tools, because it´s ZEISS Tessar design and the German factory was part of war reparations) or if it was produced by a vodka reeking Russian in the Siberian woods for the domestic socialist market. One better avoids the latter, even though there seem to have been time slots, where functional alcoholics performed pretty well, too. The quality volatility of their glass batches seems to have been the bigger issue.

Learned this from the historically and technically very interesting write up by Arne Croell on Eastern Block large format lenses. Extensive chart of pretty everything produced for LF between 1945 and 1991. The publications on his website reg LF optics are all very interesting:

https://www.arnecroell.com/eastern-block-new.pdf


I´ll test your Coffer dev, too. Thanks for sharing it.
A bit busy, but will report asap about my further tests and struggles. Don't want to mess up my road trip by being unprepared.
I too like a slow and controllable development with lots of time to guess "is this what I should aim for?" lacking the experience of frequently doing it.

Thanks guys.

---

I rather doubt that I have more experience than Alex - I'm just one of many who have had a couple years of practice is all.

That said, I also own an Industar-37 with the blue coating, and I found it has no effect (well, no measurable effect) on the performance of my wet plate materials. I doubt that lens coatings play a meaningful role in the performance of the materials. I have a multi-coated 12" Kodak Ektar lens I regularly use for wet plate images and it works as well as any of the uncoated Anastigmat and Petzval (and Verito) lenses I use. I think you can assume the Industar is not the issue here.

As for developers - there are scores of recipes out there, and they all work similarly. But I also stick with John Coffer's tried-and-true recipe - it has never let me down. Skip the sugar and just add more acid if the weather is warm and you start having trouble with silver developing in the shadow areas that should be black. If it's really warm (in the 80s F) then consider modifying the developer recipe as recommended for hot conditions. This either requires significantly more acid to restrain development, or diluting the recipe with more water (up to half strength), or both.

I think that the exceedingly dark skin tones in your examples are due entirely to three factors: the man's skin tones, the lighting (too harsh) and the exposure (you've exposed for the bright spots and his light colored short), so it's not surprising to see his skin go very dark. I believe that if you had made this plate in open shade, you'd have a much more satisfactory result. Next time, find a location that is lit only by open north sky in a shady spot, and I bet you'll get a much nicer image. North sky light is ideal for portraiture. Example That portrait was made in the shade, with the subject seated facing north, with open sky illuminating him. It's always very flattering light for portraits and allows for manageable exposure times (a few seconds).

Thanks, Paul, for being still here and heldful on this topic.

Dealing effectfully with natural light and placing ones subject into it, is truely an important part, but were skipped for different reasons on both occasion.

The two grafiti gentlemen, from the proper examples, were apporoached on the thin crest between boldy intruding into their preferrably incognito exercised hobby and facing trouble or becoming a life long member of their arts tribe. As I write, my tyres are still fully inflated and they were thankful for the plates as a gift.

The dark skinned mishap shot of me was made by my ULF wet plate buddy after lunch, because the gear was still cooking in my car for days now. We earlier messed up one of his vulgary expensive 50x60 plates and I decided to cheer him up with at least one successful wet plate that day in the parkng lot of that restaurant. Situation was me sitting directly facing the sun under a partly shading tree. Didn´t took this plate as a dessert into consideration, when I was looking for a parking spot. We were hungra, upset and desperate for a beer.

Hopefully Alex from Tasmania chimes in again and teaches us about the australian aboriginie´s ability to always know the position of the sun and their own position in the universe. I´ve once heard, that there are no words for left and right in some of their languages7 dialects, that they´d always refer to their body parts as the "souther foot" or the "norther arm".

Thanks for the vote for Coffers developer mix. Sure. What worked for him in a horse carriage shpuld work in my leaf sprung tin box, too.

Ciao

Make no mistake, I'm not nearly as knowledgeable or capable as I probably try to make myself sound. Any discussion i have is merely based in the encouragement of trying to keep the craft pure of heart rather than in the interest of another person succeeding.

I don't have a lot of experience shooting portraits, I have done a few indoor shoots and outdoors but I prefer subjects that don't talk or move.

Coffers recipe is quite concentrated, again, I've been enjoying the more dilute receipe I posted a while ago. I used to try experiment with lots of recipes for collodion and developer but quickly realised it's a fool's errand and just stuck to what worked.

I think success will come when your anxieties subside. Shooting WP portraits can be quite stressful between entertaining your subject. Keeping them engaged. Posing, juggling chemistry and camera. I never was fond of it and it shows in my amateurish portraiture but it is something I hope to improve on with my new smaller camera. I think being a successful portrait artist requires considerable people skills, a quality I greatly lack in case it wasn't already glaringly obvious.



Natural light is the best light. I can count on one hand the amount of wet plate shooters who've used artificial light I've genuinely admired. It's easy to create a striking portrait with heavy contrast light but to truly be a master of artificial light takes great skill and care, something i cannot afford the chemistry or rent to experiment with. I've been reading a lot recently of 19th century photographers and their skylight studio work and there is much to be learned from them.

The sun is an amazing light source and i believe most favourably represented in collodion. Used well you will create masterpieces with it.

Sorry. I digress. Been a big day.
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...401c64ec94.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...2fe06cbd74.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...3c32f74d08.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...4bc5357463.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...d94dbac1bf.jpg

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...e070f59fcb.jpg

Awesome Alex, thanks for that lesson in modesty!
I now feel like a six year old with mommy´s noodle sief on my head, telling Neil Armstron "Well, sir, I´m kind of an astronaut myself!"

Thanks for letting a mere mortal peep into your corner of the olymp. That´s great stuff.
Top left, the tiny blonde elf in the river bed is pure eye candy, amazing...the Petzval swirl, the location, the etheric figurine cavred out of he mist into crisp sharpness.... Bottom left, an image, Helmut Newton would be jealous of. We neither have such bushes here anymore, nor the old trees or the pitoresque book shops...

When I was younger, your corner of the world, the north west of Tasmania, was - and still sometime is - my day dream destination for a challenging wind- & kitesurf trip. One of the few pages of my World Windsurfing Guide, which isn´t check marked, yet. I´m starting to feel my age and fear, that I´ll never perform again, as I was used to in these challenging conditions in the water and wouldn´t get away with stealing a wave from a local, like I used to. Long way to go for me to dare to snatch a sun beam.

What I´m lacking in chemical knowledge and proper, thoughtful use of natural light, I believe, I - one day - may make up by my ability to tie down someone´s attention and my deep rooted desire, to make people smile. At least, when doing portraits in my windowless shed (hence not much experience with natural light), I´m trying to time the joke or story, to fit the punch line into the opening shutter. Still, I only end up with passport portraits...

I´m out now, invited to try the new old 10000Ws of flash at a befriended brown hand´s hobby room, who still believes, its´s worth asking me for assistance, while I´m only a few dozen plates ahead and obviously so far behind.

So long guys. Enjoy world wet plate day today!

I'm actually quite out of the loop these days and don't keep tabs on the who's who of photography but Paul Alsop and Brandon Fernandez are two guys who've done stuff I've admired with artificial light on wet plate. Brandon I believe did lots of work with simply one huge soft box almost like artificial diffused daylight. Paul Alsop just has very masterfully crafted very soft and romantic studio lighting.



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I´ll look up and analyse these guy´s work definitely. Thanks for the tip.
The introduction to my friends 10.000Ws Generator with a huge 5.000Ws soft box from the side and a 5.000Ws fresnel spotlight semi-frontal was pretty impressive. Soft boxes are huge and by now due to lack of space out of the question for me, but I´ll definitely strap some diffusing butter bread paper in front of my flash heads next time, to see, if can fake that effect.

Beautiful work there. Inspirational- thank you for sharing!

~ Blake

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AlexGard

....Paul Alsop and Brandon Fernandez are two guys who've done stuff I've admired with artificial light on wet plate. ....

---

Looked them up and - sure - absolutely impressive work from good professional photographers, who know what they are doing. I´d give my first born for their talent. But I have no kids. They seem to book their models to add content to their portfolio as a professional artist and hope, s/th evolves from that.

That´s not my approach as a hobbyist, nor as the spectator, sitting on my misantropic rim and watching out for the few not totally corrupted by our times. I´ve never paid women to drop their clothes nor dress up especially for me. Won´t expect you to wear a suit, when entering my oval office, if its a costume for you. Come as you are.

I want to produce a document of my time slot in this universe by naturally catching the people around me. And maybe how they change over time. Let´s see, how long my usually short attention span follows this spleen. People are talked into it from the street or my cricle of friends in their daily fashion and/or geared up in their specialized work outfit.

To boldly drop a big name I´d wish I could follow up one day here, August Sander impressed me already as a child with his talent to produce the illusion, catching all sorts of people right in the action doing their thing, while his dryplate camera surely needed extensive handling. He learned on wetplates. But he used it like a point and shoot camera. Showing their confidence, dignity and dedication to their profession.

His famous body of work is called "Antlitz der Zeit" & "Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts" (Face of time & People of the 20th century), documenting the change in society, starting from his rural roots working in the pits with the country side people from imperial 19th century Germany into the modern times of the industrialized megalopolis of the early 20th century.

I have the sneaking suspicion, our times are quite similiar and we are tumbling into an even more apocalyptic while also boring technocratic dystopia, like menkind did back then. I find no use nor sense, to record poses for clicks you´d already find on the so called social media digitally, in precious silver. I´d like to catch the salt of the earth with salted collodion to make them immortal. According to the literal translation of "ambrotype". And, risen by the narcisstic mantras of our generation, subcontiously surely want to leave something of value behind. Like a Golden Retriever leaves his poop on your lawn and expects to be padded for it. I´m still in the Jeremy Clarkson mode, with a hammer in my hand and a "How hard can it be...." thrown at it, even though I´ve already learned, it´s tough like gaining fun from catching a wave, that could kill you, doesn´t want to but actually doesn´t care. Wiped out and got washed quite a lot here, but didn´t drown, yet.

I've not had these problems so consistently since I first started.

I've shot about 15 of these 5x7 clear glass plates and everyone single one of them the developer refuses to evenly cover the whole plate. I never usually suffer thus issue especially so consistently. This is the first time shooting the smaller format which you'd think make it easier

The two variables that have changed

-smaller format, new glass
-developer recipe

Where my old recipe was Coffer's (20g iron, 6mL alcohol, 6mL acid, 100mL water, 1g potassium nitrate 16 sec) i recently changed to

10g iron, 6mL alcohol, 3.6mL acid, 100mL water, 30 sec

But i wouldn't think the reduced acid would effect the flow so much, am I wrong? No matter how slow, fast, calm, quick, or how much I rock or aggressively agitate the plate i can see the developer repelling away from the dark spots on the plate. I'm going to go back to my original recipe, but why does this happen?

The first time I used this new formula I was shooting much larger plates and had no issues in fact it seemed to work perfectly. The only difference between now and then was it was a hot day and the last couple of times I've shot and failed its been colder. https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...741fb160d3.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...6f82ceff35.jpg


The collodion (mavidon) was mixed fresh last night, as was the developer with the same batches of ingredients for each. I assume the acid to alcohol ratio has something to do with the dev not coating the whole plate evenly. No matter how hard i shake or how carefully i pour it just refuses to coat that area, it almost appears like there's oil or grease on that part of the plate the way the developer behaves and repels away from those areas.
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Hey Alex,
I once got the recommendation to add more alcohol to the developer, to make it flow more even and won´t be repelled by the film. My professional wet plate chem dealer also adds some of this surface tension breaker, used with paper foto prints for an even development and drying of the paper.
All the best

Weird because it's the same amount of alcohol I've always used per volume, I just am puzzled as to how a higher alcohol to acid ratio would make it behave that way. Never had this issue with coffers recipe.

Sent from my SM-S911B using Tapatalk

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AlexGard

I've not had these problems so consistently since I first started.

I've shot about 15 of these 5x7 clear glass plates and everyone single one of them the developer refuses to evenly cover the whole plate. I never usually suffer thus issue especially so consistently. This is the first time shooting the smaller format which you'd think make it easier

The two variables that have changed

-smaller format, new glass
-developer recipe

Where my old recipe was Coffer's (20g iron, 6mL alcohol, 6mL acid, 100mL water, 1g potassium nitrate 16 sec) i recently changed to

10g iron, 6mL alcohol, 3.6mL acid, 100mL water, 30 sec

But i wouldn't think the reduced acid would effect the flow so much, am I wrong? No matter how slow, fast, calm, quick, or how much I rock or aggressively agitate the plate i can see the developer repelling away from the dark spots on the plate. I'm going to go back to my original recipe, but why does this happen?

The first time I used this new formula I was shooting much larger plates and had no issues in fact it seemed to work perfectly. The only difference between now and then was it was a hot day and the last couple of times I've shot and failed its been colder. https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...741fb160d3.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...6f82ceff35.jpg


The collodion (mavidon) was mixed fresh last night, as was the developer with the same batches of ingredients for each. I assume the acid to alcohol ratio has something to do with the dev not coating the whole plate evenly. No matter how hard i shake or how carefully i pour it just refuses to coat that area, it almost appears like there's oil or grease on that part of the plate the way the developer behaves and repels away from those areas.
Sent from my SM-S911B using Tapatalk

---

The fix is to add more alcohol to the developer. There are so many variables that can (and often do!) affect how collodion behaves. But it’s pretty clear from your description that what’s needed is more alcohol in your developer.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AlexGard

Weird because it's the same amount of alcohol I've always used per volume, I just am puzzled as to how a higher alcohol to acid ratio would make it behave that way. Never had this issue with coffers recipe.

Sent from my SM-S911B using Tapatalk

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I´ve made different experiences with the same batch of dev; once ruined the first shot with oily dev but on the 2nd plate with the same dev, it went smooth. I think Paul gave me the tip, to pour the dev into the shot glass just before use, since the alcohol might evaporate while sitting for a while in the open shot glass. But its winter at yours, so heat evaporation shouldn´t be an issue right now.
Since the alcohol doesn´t do any harm to the dev process, I´m mixing a good 10%ish solution, so to 400ml h2o I add at least 40ml of 99%alcohol (cheap stove fuel/bio ethanol) just to be sure.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by paulbarden

The fix is to add more alcohol to the developer. There are so many variables that can (and often do!) affect how collodion behaves. But it’s pretty clear from your description that what’s needed is more alcohol in your developer.

---

That was the most obvious thing to me as well. But as I said it's the same amount of alcohol I've always used and I've never had this problem before.

What would you start with? Add 10mL alcohol more to every 100mL dev?

Oh well.. I'll try again next wk with old recipe.

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Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AlexGard

That was the most obvious thing to me as well. But as I said it's the same amount of alcohol I've always used and I've never had this problem before.

What would you start with? Add 10mL alcohol more to every 100mL dev?

Oh well.. I'll try again next wk with old recipe.

Sent from my SM-S911B using Tapatalk

---

There have been days when I could not get a usable plate no matter what I tried, even using materials that worked perfectly the day before. Sometimes collodion is truly a baffling process. On days like that, I quit and try again another day.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by paulbarden

There have been days when I could not get a usable plate no matter what I tried, even using materials that worked perfectly the day before. Sometimes collodion is truly a baffling process. On days like that, I quit and try again another day.

---

I had this same problem last week. I hadn't been able to shoot for a while due to car problems. I then drove 2 hours into the middle of nowhere to shoot some trees and couldn't get a plate. This week I thought id keep closer to home and see if fresh chemicals sorted the problem. Nope. Frustrating when I only get a small window

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Hello everyone. I am new to this forum but have shot wet plate for the past three years with normally quite succesfull results.

But now I have found an issue in my collodion. The collodion emulsion is partly peeling off while in the silver bath. This is sometimes coupled with the plate edges also drying up already.

What can cause this peeling? Is my collodion too wet or the nitrocellulose too weak? I mix my own chemicals and my raw collodion bottle of ÖAB ~4% is about 3 years old.

I have poured normal good plates in the past, but am I still making some error before I put the plate into the silver bath?

I feel like I have two problems at the same time: too wet collodion in plate center + too dry collodion at plate edges.

Below are two photos: one showing the peeling, and one showing peeling in the bottom + drying at the edges.

Please help! Thanks! :)

Attachment 260081
Attachment 260082

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wetplatefinland

Hello everyone. I am new to this forum but have shot wet plate for the past three years with normally quite succesfull results.

But now I have found an issue in my collodion. The collodion emulsion is partly peeling off while in the silver bath. This is sometimes coupled with the plate edges also drying up already.

What can cause this peeling? Is my collodion too wet or the nitrocellulose too weak? I mix my own chemicals and my raw collodion bottle of ÖAB ~4% is about 3 years old.

I have poured normal good plates in the past, but am I still making some error before I put the plate into the silver bath?

I feel like I have two problems at the same time: too wet collodion in plate center + too dry collodion at plate edges.

Below are two photos: one showing the peeling, and one showing peeling in the bottom + drying at the edges.

Please help! Thanks! :)

Attachment 260081
Attachment 260082

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The most likely culprit is - as you've suspected - is the collodion. Collodion doesn't age well, especially if stored in a place where it gets warm for periods of time. As yours is now 3 years old, and your collodion seems to be misbehaving, that is the first things I would suggest changing: buy fresh and start over.

I assume you are maintaining your silver bath as prescribed, yes? If collodion is coming off in the silver bath, it must be filtered out!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by paulbarden

The most likely culprit is - as you've suspected - is the collodion. Collodion doesn't age well, especially if stored in a place where it gets warm for periods of time. As yours is now 3 years old, and your collodion seems to be misbehaving, that is the first things I would suggest changing: buy fresh and start over.

I assume you are maintaining your silver bath as prescribed, yes? If collodion is coming off in the silver bath, it must be filtered out!

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Thanks for your quick reply.

I regularly filter and maintain my silver bath. It is always kept clean of detached collodion emulsion.

Just to clarify one thing: my mixed collodion is also always fresh... but... the raw collodion is suspectedly expired.

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Originally Posted by wetplatefinland

Just to clarify one thing: my mixed collodion is also always fresh... but... the raw collodion is suspectedly expired.

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Yes, I gathered that you had just made fresh salted collodion from scratch recently. But plain USP collodion doesn't last forever. In my experience, even under ideal conditions, 2-2.5 years is about the limit.