Lane Dry Plates: What is a practical ISO rating?

[KingTigerII]

Hello, I just purchased some of J Lane's Speed plates and while they arrive I am researching everything. The UV spectrum sensitivity is probably a huge cause for exposure errors when using normal (particularly modern) light meters.

My questions is: surely there could be a way to make a light meter with a sensor that is matched to the sensitivity of the plates? I would be surprised if there were no electronics experts here that could come up with something...

Honestly - It's not needed. I get it, I researched the hell out of these before I shot my first plates. Went as far as to try to find historical documentation for vintage plates, then converted the ancient sensitivity rating to another ancient dead rating, to another, to ISO.

The thing is -there is no need for a meter like that. Modern films, black & white or color, have gotten to the point where you have to have a catastrophic failure in metering or camera operation to screw up. Over expose or under expose by a stop with most professional films they'll take it easily.

The UV shift isn't that bad anyways, and if you read through the blog posts Jason has and the instructions he gives us to sue the plates, you'll be fine. If you mess up - well that's the process. That's actually kinda the fun with this, it's taking photography back 100+ years. You meter with charts and experience.

[EH21]

I have the sekonic color spectrum meter c-700 and you can use the CRI histogram to meter for the dry plates with a little bit of math. It's even just helpful to get a quick look at the lighting.

[jnantz]

Is anyone creating Ambrotypes using J. Lane plates?

Hi Drew:

If you use dry plates to make Silver Gelatin Ambrotype/Silver Gelatin Ferrotypes you need to use a special developer. Rockland Colloid used to sell a proprietary mix you might be able to buy it ready made at Freestyle or through the Rockland Colloid website ..
you can also find a useful information here: https://zebradryplates.com/how-to-us...late-tintypes/
I love silver gelatin ferrotypes / ambrotypes but haven't used Jason ( Nejc(ZebraPlates) ) or other plates, and the reversals I got when I used the rockland developer ( and coated my own plates &c ) always gave a weird greenish hue.
From the info on Jason and Nejc's websites, the FB Group, IG et. C. it looks like Jason, Lee, Nick and Nejc figured out the magic of these developers that used to be proprietary, and they are extremely nice to offer it to the general public .. !
The Darkroom Cookbook and I think Christopher James' book also has a few similar developers.

Good luck!
John