J. Lane Dry Plates have an ISO of 2 meaning portraits using ambient light are problematic. Does anyone have any experience with using dry plates with studio flash?
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J. Lane Dry Plates have an ISO of 2 meaning portraits using ambient light are problematic. Does anyone have any experience with using dry plates with studio flash?
Yes
Use a flash meter set to iso2. It will take a lot of flash power I would think.
I'll see if my flash is powerful enough. My LF lenses are only f5.6. Any short duration reciprocity?
Recently I was invited to teach a session at the NH Institute of Art on shooting dry plate, and the class was set up for studio portraiture using a strobe. I'm not an indoor shooter, so the instructor handled that... I was there to show them how they're made and how to develop the plates. I believe they used 2400 or 4800 W/s strobe and set the aperture for ISO 1. They would trip the shutter, pop the strobe, then close the shutter. We then developed the plates by inspection. That worked well. Just make sure you take off any UV filters.
Personally, I've used old school flash bulbs with success. You just have to extrapolate the guide number down to ASA 2. I've actually done that extrapolation in excel for data on a bunch of different flashbulb types and manufacturers. I plan to post that to the website some time.
I'm sure the plates have some short duration reciprocity failure, but I haven't characterized it and as mentioned I've seen strobe flash used successfully.
Cheers,
Jason
I have 10,000ws, might try in a week or two.
Kent in SD
If you're photographing people with high flash power, make sure to have the ambient light very high. That will close down their pupils and make the flash more bearable. With all the flash power, the ambient won't matter for the photo.