Sensitizing box vs tray, and cadmium vs lithium?

[m00dawg]

I've been looking at wet plate again. Thinking about finally starting to order some of the staple items so I can finally make progress on working up to giving it a go. Among the first things is the sensitizing box. I assumed nearly everyone uses a box but while scouring videos and info, I see a few folks using a tray? I would have thought the box is "safer" (but I guess safe is relative depending on the other chemicals some folks may opt to use, and as well that most of the chemicals are explosive...) but I was curious as to the thoughts there. The sensitizing boxes seem to be rather expensive for what they are. I'm sure I could make my own but not sure I could do a better job than just buying one for the time tradeoff and folks that sell boxes already know what they are doing But it, as well as a holder, seem to be the two biggest cost points to getting things going.

Secondarily, I had planned to use lithium-based collodion. It seems folks like UVP have pre-made ones that are listed as "fast" which is a nice bonus (UVP3). It seems most lithium collodions do not last as long but I think that's an ok trade-off to avoid the cadmium. When I was looking into all this before, I was able to find good info on the differences between cadmium and lithium-based collodion but haven't been able to find those again. I do have a collodion book around here somewhere which I think explains it. I'm not sure where I put it so I'll need to start tearing the house apart to look for it.... in the meantime, any quick takeaways I should be aware of?

I wanted to avoid both cadmium and potassium-cyanide. I know those opinions are far reaching, but for now those are boundaries I have given myself especially for if/when I start mixing my own collodion from scratch. I actually rather like the cooler more neutral tones anyway.

The main concern was speed. I'm used to J Lane dry plates which I usually expose around 1 ISO which seems to be the "faster" of the collodion speeds?

As an aside, J Lane's plates are lovely! And I do plan on continuing to use those. I was mostly looking at tintype portraits for wet plate where I can shoot them here at home and develop in my darkroom shed or where I can eventually have a portable darkroom. I'll continue to use dry plates for landscape and when traveling where I just don't want to (or can't) tote around a portable darkroom. In fact I find dry plates are certainly safer but they dramatically extend the time it takes to iterate (which can also be costly when buying pre-made plates). This was one issue that has kept me from exploring ambrotypes more on the dry-plate side.

[goamules]

Different collodion recipes can be faster or slower. I can't remember which is fastest, but if you do your research you should be able to see. I used Old Workhorse (with cad) and when fresh it could be shot at least 1 ISO. I'd get about a 3 second exposure at mid day at about F8. You needed a shutter if you opened up your lens more. It slows down every week or two. By a month, it is about half the speed it was the first week.

[m00dawg]

Thanks for the info! I ended up giving UVP3 a go and was getting about 1 ISO albeit with a coated lens (which at the time I forgot might block UV). I ordered it in two parts and only mixed up a small batch. It's now a few weeks old so I expect it will be quite a bit slower as it is known to age quickly. It'll be a few weeks yet before I can do more wet plate.

I ended up using trays and it worked out though I'm getting scum on my plate during development which doesn't clear in the fix. I have to lightly wipe it off in the wash. Kinda ruins part of the fun of wet-plate and need to troubleshoot what's going on there. Guessing contaminants from the trays maybe. I bought the silver bath premixed but have bought a hydrometer and will be getting grain alcohol and silver crystals just to have some on hand and then look at sunning the existing bath.

A traveling tank is definitely in my future...