And yet somehow you've arrived at the conclusion that this is a bot. Amazing. Prescient.Originally Posted by Tin Can
And yet somehow you've arrived at the conclusion that this is a bot. Amazing. Prescient.
Deduction, Watson
Tin Can
Dude, I worry about you.
Don't worry, I'm human... I see I wasn't clear with my questions though!
We're just going to have a firm to enlarge them...
What I wanted to know about was recommendations for Camera and Lens types for Wet Plate "architectural" work... and if my ideas for a Portrait setup were practical... or if there was a camera / lens combination that could work well for both...
At present I'm leaning towards a dedicated portrait wet plate camera, and a dedicated "out on the town" wet plate camera that probably has a shutter and a slider for Fstops... any suggestions? Thanks again!
Look it up how they did it back in the day when wetplate was not the exception but the rule in photography. The archive.org has a lot of books from that period, including architectural photography.
Now you seem human
your parsing was very mechanical
Your goal is difficult
Bon Voyage
Tin Can
See?!
You're still not being very clear about your intent in regards to enlarging the images. If you are paying someone else to provide enlargements, how will it be done? By scanning the plates and then making digital enlargements from those? Or do you intend to have someone make optical enlargements with a suitable enlarger in a darkroom, on silver gelatin paper? There is a world of difference between the two.
On to lenses. "or if there was a camera / lens combination that could work well for both" and "We also plan on doing gallery exhibitions that showcase aspects of our city - market stalls, store fronts, etc... This is where we are really stuck ---we love extra sharp focus as well as edges with imperfections / blur etc": No. A single lens won't work well for both scenarios, since your goals for the two are somewhat in conflict, style-wise.
Unless you want to create very loosey-goosey, blur-in-all-the-corners "artsy" architecture work, then a lens best suited to portraiture isn't going to work well with architecture. If you are wanting to pursue the "Petzval Portrait" style of portraits, that lens is not going to be very useful for architecture. The camera is not very relevant to the results you're after - a camera is just a light tight box with film on one end and a lens on the other - as long as you get a functional device. For architecture, you're going to need a lens in a shutter, so you can control outdoor exposure times. Collodion is slow, it's true - but not so slow as to avoid needing shutter speeds in fractions of a second. Any modern lens in a working shutter will be fine for architecture: Fuji, Rodenstock, Schneider, etc. etc. Get an appropriate focal length for the format/size.
You've said nothing about your budget for this plan. Sourcing the right equipment is going to depend entirely on your budget. If you have 20K to invest, then you are free to choose from the best of what large format cameras have to offer. Look at what Chamonix Cameras has to offer. Same for lenses; if you're planning on buying a GOOD portrait Petzval, expect to spend up to $1200 (for 5x7 coverage Mine is a Voigtlander Petzval, f3.5), depending on the brand and model. My Lerebours et Secretan 15" Petzval cost me $2000 in 2018. You need a dedicated wet plate holder, which will cost about $200 for a worthwhile one (I do NOT recommend the 3D printed plastic ones). The silver nitrate tank and materials will cost several hundred dollars to set up also. Are you planning on working on glass, or black aluminum "trophy plate"? If it is your primary intent to enlarge these images, then working on glass will make the task vastly easier (and mandatory, if you intend on having optical enlargements made).
You mentioned a J. Audouin camera - what do you know about the image size/film holder size it uses? You need to know that. Odds are it's one of the old sizes - like "half plate" or maybe "whole plate" which do not equal modern formats like 5x7. So, you have to make sure what you're buying is going to be practical/usable. May people buy old "half plate" type cameras and regret it quickly, since it doesn't match modern size standards. Spare yourself some grief and find a camera that conforms to modern size standards (5x7, you wanted).
If price isn't an issue, I'd go with a modern Chamonix 5x7 and get the Chamonix plate holders. It'll save you some grief.
And finally, who have you done a workshop with (or plan to)? I would NOT recommend just picking up a book (or gawd forbid, reading a bunch of web pages) to learn the process. Have a skilled practitioner teach you. It's more difficult than most people imagine.
Thanks Eugen... I've found a few I will look into. Just hoping someone had some experience. I am reposting this in the "wet plate" forums here... thanks again!
Some of us do, yes. I have been working with Wet Plate Collodion since 2017 and have made hundreds of plates. Please see my comments in the post, above. :-)
A note on cost. You can do wet plate with any camera and basically any lens, but wet plate folks in general like a fast lens for portraits because the medium is slow, and because they like the swirly bokeh of a wide open lens. Something like f4 or 4.5 works. You do not need a shutter for wet plate, if you have a nice old brass lens. Because its slow, you can use a hat or any number of other techniques.
If I were you, I would start out (and maybe continue) by modifying regular film holders, rather than buying special, expensive, wet plate holders. Any 4x5 or 5x7 holder can be converted for wet plate.
For tanks, etc, you can make them. First I made a silver bath out of clear plexiglas and built a wooden box for it, like they did with the glass ones in the old days, but later we made them out of red plexiglas, with a red glass cover, and those worked fine. Meant I could open the door of the darkroom (closet) while the plate sensitized.
Then, your main costs to get started will collodion and silver. For plates, I am partial to glass, but we also used a lot of black plexi, which yields a similar look as the black trophy plate they use in the US, but was a lot cheaper. You can use single window glass, or just buy old frames at thrift shops and cut that glass (which is thinner) down for plates. Good luck!
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