Should there be a Wet Plate subforum?

[Tin Can]

YES!

As I plan to contact print wet plates once DRY

on DIY print emusions

When one has a hammer everything looks like a nail

or historical railroad spike

Perhaps the sub forum needs an expansive inclusive title...

[Mark Sawyer]

Large format is a small enough sub-genre of its own.

[Duolab123]

YES!

As I plan to contact print wet plates once DRY

on DIY print emusions

When one has a hammer everything looks like a nail

or historical railroad spike

Perhaps the sub forum needs an expansive inclusive title...

So does wet plate call for POP for your paper? I'm a total ignoramus Re wet plate, but wouldn't the peak of wet plate have been with salt prints, or albumen, early gelatin POP???

[Duolab123]

Or Platinum or Carbon!!

[Tin Can]

I haven't started to learn, and never made a any plate

First I will make Tins, then Plates and when one looks good Salt and Albumen contacts will be added.

Baby steps

I want a dedicated Sub Forum so it does not get lost in the vastness of LFPF archive.

Many have problems with LFPF search, which is best done with Google only. Precise wording is required

In essence this starts with a single line of text.

So does wet plate call for POP for your paper? I'm a total ignoramus Re wet plate, but wouldn't the peak of wet plate have been with salt prints, or albumen, early gelatin POP???

[paulbarden]

So does wet plate call for POP for your paper? I'm a total ignoramus Re wet plate, but wouldn't the peak of wet plate have been with salt prints, or albumen, early gelatin POP???

Most practitioners make positives (tintypes, alumitypes, ambrotypes, etc.), which does not require any further steps to produce an image. However, wet plate collodion negatives are loaded with rich detail and tonality that can be used to make salt prints, albumen prints, traditional silver gelatin prints, and more. Its all up to the photographer how they wants to use the process for image making.

Two days ago I made a new silver bath, so I could perform maintenance on my main bath, and I needed to make a test plate to verify its performance, so I made an 8x10 negative using the 190mm Wide Field Ektar (which I don't typically use for making wet plate negatives: too much detail) I produced two negatives of similar density: one would work well for silver gelatin printing and scanning to make a DNG, and the other I redeveloped with Iodine/Iron redeveloper to build density and contrast for "alt" print making, such as albumen or salt. Here is the result of a scan of the first plate (not redeveloped), showing the detail and tonal range possible with a wet plate negative:

Here it is.

I want a dedicated Sub Forum so it does not get lost in the vastness of LFPF archive.

Many have problems with LFPF search, which is best done with Google only.

I agree with both of these statements. Thanks to people like Borut Peterlin, Quinn Jacobson, John Coffer and others, the Wet Plate process is enjoying a surge in interest that seems to expand every year. Since Quinn has retired his own wet plate forum, it would be a great asset to have a dedicated forum section here where practitioners could share knowledge and seek help. This is a fussy, complicated process at times, and it appears to me that every newcomer needs help learning their way through the technique. It would be nice to have a place for that here. I've said this before: Facebook may be a popular place to go for stuff like this, but its terrible when it comes to archiving valuable data. And that's not even mentioning Facebook's horrible "walled garden" approach to "community".

[rdenney]

Okay, this thread is branching--let's see if we can focus it. A few people are saying there is interest in a forum devoted to (my reading) DIY emulsions including wet-plate collodion.

1. Are there enough people interested in this to support a subforum? The usual way we test that is to see how threads do.

2. Where would we draw the boundary? Can we draw the boundary to image-capture only, versus darkroom processes? That appeals to me as reasonable--a sub-forum for discussions of techniques for creating photographs made using emulsions applied by the photographer. Would that suit?

Let's NOT talk about the techniques and processes of wet plate in this thread, now that it has been moved to Feedback. If we create a forum, let's save it for there. If we do it in a series of threads, that's where those discussions should be.

As to showing images, those image forums are agnostic to process, though threads in those forums already provide process-based segregation. But there's nothing against people showing examples of their process-specific photographs in threads that discuss those processes. Bet let's save those technical discussions for a bit until we figure this out.

Rick "gathering data" Denney

[paulbarden]

2. Where would we draw the boundary? Can we draw the boundary to image-capture only, versus darkroom processes? That appeals to me as reasonable--a sub-forum for discussions of techniques for creating photographs made using emulsions applied by the photographer. Would that suit?
Rick "gathering data" Denney

I'm confused by this. The question is whether or not we should be creating a distinct area to focus on the wet plate collodion process. I see no point in drawing a line to create a distinction between Emulsion Process and Darkroom Process. The wet plate process can be (and often is) both things. Even if the way forward is to create a more inclusive "All Things Alt" sub-forum, I still see little value in drawing lines between camera process and subsequent darkroom process, because - for example - if you make wet plate negatives with the intention of making prints from them, there is value in being able to find data in the same place. After all, POP print making is "creating photographs made using emulsions applied by the photographer", which is intimately related to making the collodion negative.

Paul "offering data" Barden

[paulbarden]

Okay, this thread is branching--let's see if we can focus it. A few people are saying there is interest in a forum devoted to (my reading) DIY emulsions including wet-plate collodion.

Actually, the question is "Should there be a Wet Plate sub-forum". This came in response to the fact that Quinn Jacobson recently eliminated the discussion forum component of his web site, and so a couple of people suggested we 1) preserve the content of Quinn's forum and 2) make a place for it here, and allow for continued discussion.

[Ari]

Actually, the question is "Should there be a Wet Plate sub-forum". This came in response to the fact that Quinn Jacobson recently eliminated the discussion forum component of his web site, and so a couple of people suggested we 1) preserve the content of Quinn's forum and 2) make a place for it here, and allow for continued discussion.

I'd like to see a wet plate sub-forum, dedicated solely to the wet plate process. Of course something like printmaking from collodion glass negatives can be a thread of its own, much like I can envision "Collodion Recipes" or "Pouring a Plate Evenly" or "What type of Fixer is Safe for Home Use?" etc etc.
Those of us who are starting/re-starting in wet plate may have ambitious goals, but we're mostly getting the B&S starter kit and hoping for the best.
More experienced practitioners, like Paul, are going in some other directions while still shooting WP, and I'm sure they'd have lots to say about their respective goals and processes, and would want WP-based threads to be able to further those goals.