Making glass plate negative holder ideas.

[Old_Dick]

Hi Folks,

I have a hundred-plus glass plates. Any idea on how to make a negative carrier for them? They look like 4x5. Need to really look at them. I'll let you know what they are once I get my ass in gear. I believe some are from the Spanish American War. Any wisdom for contact printing? I really don't want to hear "crack".

[Greg]

10 plus years ago I tackled a collection of 1,033 4x5, 5x7, and some 8x10 glass plates that were taken by a photographer in our town between 1890 to around 1920. First thing I did was photograph them digitally and print up 50+ 13x19" proof sheets to just see what was there. Started to ID and catalogue the images, and am still doing that. Made some contact Salt prints from the glass plates and some 20x28" digital enlargements from the digital image files for our local bank to put on their walls. When the glass plates were taken, the photographer only made contact prints from them... I feel obligated to follow on his technique and his tradition. D-max of a lot of them measures 2.4 or higher. Contact printing on FB paper produced only so-so results. Contact printing with Salt & Platinum/Palladium produced lot better tonalities. Never heard that "crack" sound because I modified a contact printing frame that "exposed" the glass plates to absolute minimal pressure.

[higherres]

What enlarger are you using for these glass plate negatives? The simplest way to do this in my opinion (and I work with my own glass wet collodion negatives) is to remove your negative carrier and replace it with a piece of glass. On top of this glass you lay your glass negative, making sure that you thoroughly clean the supporting glass. There doesn’t need to be any pressure on the pieces of glass, only a way to lower your lamp housing around them. Or you can jury rig a wrap of some sort to keep the enlarging light within the housing.


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[John Layton]

...but why even use glass as the negative itself is glass?

If I were about to undertake the printing from a large number of glass plates, and assuming consistency of plate size...then I would either utilize or modify a glassless carrier to accept these glass plate negatives by themselves - assuming that I'd lose just a bit of margin to the supporting flange...a small price in exchange for eliminating two additional (and otherwise useless) glass surfaces.

Make sense?

[Tin Can]

Some enlargers such as Elwood have removable glass and many adapters were made for glass negative plate

[Old_Dick]

Hi Folks,

Omega D5 XL. Thanks

[Ironage]

The my wooden Elwood negative carriers are really meant for plates. Likewise antique contact frames never had glass in them. Just drop the plate in carefully.