Old Collodion Com wetplate site return

[goamules]

Quinn's forum was a low traffic space at the best of times. It wasn't unusual for weeks to go by without a single post. Clearly much of the traffic went to Facebook, and I expect that is one of the reason's Quinn decided to pull the plug on it.
Now that most viewers believe the forum is gone, I imagine few (if any) of them even have a bookmark to the site now. Restoring traffic is going to be difficult, because I expect Facebook has now captured most of the refugees. Such a shame.

That's not true Paul, when I started wetplate in about 2006, there were just two online places to learn how. the Civil War Collodion group run by Bob Szabo, and Quinn's collodion dot com. There were no facebook wetplate groups. On Collodion there were posts and questions and long threads daily. We had such a vibrant active group we even planned a group gathering in Paris to do a wetplate demo at a show. We started the World Wetplate Day, and published a book of the first year's plates done by everyone. I made a lot of friends, many from around the world. Some have visited me. Just like here, on the LF forum back then. Remember when 45-50 members here were the experts, checking in daily, commenting on their expertise, advising, selling dozens of lenses a month, commenting on recent lens sales, gallery openings, and the like? I do. Camera shows used to be common too. Today.....it's crickets. Everyone today on FB does their quick flyby question, and then they filter the 14 FB answers to try to find the truth. There is no community or friendships formed, it's a bunch of meaningless "names" of people you see once or twice and never again. OR, you get one "super user" that runs the group and answers every post - allowing no real discourse - it's his personal soap box.

What I don't like about the FB format (among many things), is it's not a "juried show." Anyone and everyone can comment, answer wrongly, be rude. there are no rules, no moderation, and if someone gets kicked off for being mean, he just switches over to one of the 14 other wetplate groups and starts up again. They're all the same and have all the same members. There's no peer review or expertise. It is....chaos. And the misinformation highway.

Many have started supposed "Brass Lens show and sell" FB groups, basically so they can scoop up the ones that newbies show up asking questions about. The whole FB place reeks of fraud and aggression and politics.

[paulbarden]

That's not true Paul, when I started wetplate in about 2006, there were just two online places to learn how. the Civil War Collodion group run by Bob Szabo, and Quinn's collodion dot com. There were no facebook wetplate groups. On Collodion there were posts and questions and long threads daily. We had such a vibrant active group we even planned a group gathering in Paris to do a wetplate demo at a show.

Garrett,
I can only speak to my own experience, having joined the forum in the Fall of 2018. In my short time with Quinn's forum, I never saw activity on that level, and weeks often passed between new posts.

[goamules]

Quinn's forum was a low traffic space at the best of times. It wasn't unusual for weeks to go by without a single post.

Garrett,
I can only speak to my own experience, having joined the forum in the Fall of 2018. In my short time with Quinn's forum, I never saw activity on that level, and weeks often passed between new posts.

That's why I commented when you wrote "...low traffic at the best of times..." which is untrue. Yes, in the past 3-4 years it died off. But the best of times from 2005-2013 it was extremely active. Like I said, many posts every day from many people. In 2008 I would say facebook was low traffic, especially for vintage camera groups. Those have reversed now. Forums are dead, Facebook is popular.

Here is one example. Quinn himself decided to go with the flow and created a FB group called "Wetplate Collodion Photography" about the time his forum was dropping off, maybe 2013. Within a few months someone opened a "Wetplate Collodion Photographer" (note noun). Someone wanted to be a group with competing ideas to Quinn's. It got confusing which was which, the "....photographer" version was more rigorously controlled by one guy that wanted everyone to agree with him. Then a newbie to wetplate got tired of everyone revering John Coffer, Quinn, and Szabo, and was always trying to do things a different way, some good ideas, some zany just to see if he could. Like creating silver nitrate from old silver scrap - very dangerous. Or trying to tell people you can use regular film developer for wetplate. He didn't know anything, but liked to guess and cause arguments a lot. Eventually, he formed yet another group called Collodion Bastards. As you can imagine, it was full of pompous chest pounding and bragging by people "proving" they could do wetplate in unusual ways. Today, I'm sure there are 5 more "wetplate" groups on facebook. Like everything today, it became factional and chaotic, and "us against them".

From time to time someone asks "should I start publishing a wetplate magazine?" Um...no, it wouldn't sell. When Quinn told me he shut down Collodion.com due to lack of interest, I was saddened as I posted here. He told me he'd give me all the source files and did. I told him I would "try" to put it back up, "sometime", or maybe publish a huge pdf or something. But as I looked at it, I realized it would be a big waste of my time, like it was for Quinn. And since everyone on the internet want's everything for free - it would be on my dime to host and maintain it. Quinn tried to get funding with optional donations from time to time. Never worked. And everyone had run to "no order or rules" facebook groups anyway. I decided to stall.... The other guy took it up.

By the way, Quinn has remained one of the most active wetplate trainers and advocates in the world. He's got Youtube channels, etc. He just gave up on forums. http://quinnjacobsonphoto.squarespace.com/blog/

[Tin Can]

Never going back to FB OR Instagram

They are both owned by the same idiot and interconnected

We do need need to pump this forum

I am sad so many have deserted

[RyanSem]

Figured I'd make an account here simply to ask if collodion.com is actively managed. I made an account last week and can't do anything until an admin approves me... and there's a ton of questions I need assistance with.

[paulbarden]

Figured I'd make an account here simply to ask if collodion.com is actively managed. I made an account last week and can't do anything until an admin approves me... and there's a ton of questions I need assistance with.

Many of the same wet plate people are here as well. You have access to plenty of knowledge in the wet plate section of this forum, so feel free to ask your questions.

[goamules]

I just pinged Quinn to tell the new Admin to get on the ball. I hope you can at least search the copious answers to almost every question on that site. No need to ask them again....read the site.

[Mike in NY]

I'm so glad this site is back up. I joined in 2014 and missed having it as a resource while it was gone.

[Kiwi7475]

Yeah I’m also waiting for the Admin to activate my account... until then there’s no way to explore anything....

[pound]

i just relogin to https://collodion.com/ forum site too. 6 years ago there isn't much commercial wetplate related products and that site gave me a lot of ideas for DIY projects including ULF cameras and plate holder. From the posts there, I learnt that not every camera or plate holder have to be built like a commercial product .