How to imitate the contrast of wet plate

[Tin Can]

Good thread

I am also interested

[paulbarden]

you recommended not using a technique that will give a similar look to wet plate and instead using a film that won't... so yes.

A simple blue-violet filter isn’t going to achieve the right result either, so….

[maltfalc]

A simple blue-violet filter isn’t going to achieve the right result either, so….

it'll get him most of the way there and is a necessary step unless he has access to colour blind film. the rest is just a matter of how he exposes and develops the film.

[jnantz]

it'll get him most of the way there and is a necessary step unless he has access to colour blind film. the rest is just a matter of how he exposes and develops the film.

not exactly, you put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig. but sometimes it's ok any say "hey this is a pig with lipstick on it"

years ago Starbucks coffee had these images that looked like gum over platinum prints on glass, hanging on the walls of every Starbucks you could find. they weren't gum over platinum on glass but looked pretty cool just the same.
it's too bad people get too hung up on and arguing about how an image is made instead of just making images ...

[maltfalc]

not exactly, you put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig. but sometimes it's ok any say "hey this is a pig with lipstick on it"

years ago Starbucks coffee had these images that looked like gum over platinum prints on glass, hanging on the walls of every Starbucks you could find. they weren't gum over platinum on glass but looked pretty cool just the same.
it's too bad people get too hung up on and arguing about how an image is made instead of just making images ...

film is not a pig. there's nothing inherently inferior or inauthentic about using modern materials to create a look that was traditionally done some other way.

[nolindan]

I have taken photos on TMX with a UV filter - again looking for a Civil War wet-plate look.

I used a B+W 403 UV Black filter. Focus had to be shifted. I can't remember the EI I found, but "shady 4.0" turned into a ~20 second (?) exposure instead of 1/100; lens was a Nikkor 50mm f1.4.

The results for portraiture were horrid. Every possible skin blemish was revealed in all it's glory, with a few gratuitously added for good measure. I didn't get the 'pale eyes' effect, but it seems only some of the blue-eyed population produce white irises on wet plate. Glasses with UV protection turned from clear to black, as one would expect.

I would try a bog-standard #47 deep blue filter first before diving into the UV -- look out for freckles.

[Vaughn]

...
it's too bad people get too hung up on and arguing about how an image is made instead of just making images ...

No sense argueing about it, but in my own work, how the image was made and the materials used are as much a part of the image as the arrangement of light.

[jnantz]

film is not a pig. there's nothing inherently inferior or inauthentic about using modern materials to create a look that was traditionally done some other way.

not sure where you are from maltfalc but that's an "american" expression meaning "not the real deal" / "not the real McCoy". my comment has nothing to do with the authenticity of film or paper or whatever, but the fact that
it's not Wet Plate ( the real deal, the real McCoy ). While a film or paper based image as a starting point can yield a similar, maybe exact replica of a Wet Plate image, it's not a wet plate image.
not sure why you took offense to my comment, I've been making similar image to what the OP is interested in making for 20 years. Some local guy to me who is a wet plate aficionado saw one of my images and
asked me about my lenses and cameras, collodion recipe, developer/fixer recipe &c and I think he might have been disappointed when I told him it was box camera, a meniscus lens, tmy(400), and sumatranol130 (for both the negative and print) and while I know how to, and have the materials to make WP images, I don't because I have more fun at the moment using film and paper. ( or making cyanotypes and salted silver cyanotypes )
BTW one of my neighbors has a pig, it's great pet. it's a Vietnamese Tea Cup Pig, and weighs just under of 200 lbs, he told me that if it weighed over 200lbs it wouldn't be miniature (I might have the weights off, but it's big).

[paulbarden]

film is not a pig. there's nothing inherently inferior or inauthentic about using modern materials to create a look that was traditionally done some other way.

Well, not necessarily. I've seen plenty of photos made entirely in photoshop that the author promotes as "wet plate", and its disingenuous at best.
I still think that if you want the wet plate collodion look, then learn to make wet plate collodion images. Anything else is just an approximation.