I use a Norman 40/40 for dry plate. I really don’t know how much wet plate is different from dry plate is. But my emulsion is around ISO 1 ish and I have to use 4000w at f4.5 to expose properly.
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I use a Norman 40/40 for dry plate. I really don’t know how much wet plate is different from dry plate is. But my emulsion is around ISO 1 ish and I have to use 4000w at f4.5 to expose properly.
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Wow! Thanks for sharing! I just picked up another 4KWS Norman, the price was too good to pass up.
The UV coating was an option on the LH2000 heads and was to prevent fluorescing of wedding dresses in particular. As far as I know UV coating was standard on the LH2400 heads. Both are capable of 2400WS.
Chiming in just to drop an alternative to professional studio gear:
My wet plates are done on a budget and sometimes out doors, so I´ve searched for cheap and mobile akku flash. I ended up with 2 sets of "Jinbei DC 1200", which were sourced for 350€ combined*. Each pack serves two heads and delivers 1200ws to a single head or splits them into 800/400ws for two heads.
2400ws from two DC 1200 packs with all four heads at ca 1-1.5m distance, no diffusor, shot on 8x10" tin & glass (sorry for the reflection) with the 20"f6.3 Wray aerial lens, old Packard shutter is opened for ca 1sec under the the Jinbei´s LED-setting light (to assure synchronization of that unreliable shutter) before flash.
*The battery packs of the DC1200 are known to lose durability over time, which makes them pretty useless for modern digital shootings, where vulgar amounts of exposures are expected. Many pros drop them for cheap. For the few wet plates I do on a day, a worn out battery is still sufficient and much cheaper replaced/reconditioned, than the often faulty and hard to source capacitors in older studio gear, like the Speedotrons and such, which then suffer from non-consistant amount of light thrown out.
Nice. I got my Norman 40/40 with 2 4000w heads for 200. I hope I can find another 40/40 so I can run both heads. Next week I’m going make some collodion and see if I can get it sensitive to run 2000w on each head. Then I can us a main and hair light.
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Be careful of the Normans; old power packs like these can be lethal. That was advice given to us by architectural photographer Norman McGrath in a 2002 workshop I took from him.
Earlier that year, I was interested in a pair of 4000 watt-second Normans being sold by our local Pro Photo Supply. The sales person made a comment or two and diverted to another customer. So experimenting, I turned the main power switch to off and pressed a button to discharge the pack.
KerPow!!! That power pack lit up like a Christmas tree. Absolutely scared the hell out of me. Of course, the power pack was gone. Needless to say, I withdrew from the purchase. I later called the Norman company and was told that the power pack must have been defective. Thank goodness I didn't discover the defect plugging a strobe into that pack. As Norman McGrath was later to say, old power packs can be lethal.
So at the end of the workshop, I asked Norman, were he beginning fresh, what would he purchase? He responded that he would purchase Dynalite. They have special safety features that prevent shocks, when connecting Dynalite strobes to their power packs. Norman routinely carried five strobes and power packs providing up to 5000 watt-seconds. So, I purchased, and still have, the equivalent in Dynalites. And, I'm still around to use them.
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