Could this be the world’s smallest wet plate camera? Well, if not, it’s still very cool.
This miniature wet plate camera takes 1/2″ square plate photos.
The article shows this beauty as well as a picture taken with it.
Click here for more wet plate collodion cameras and accessories… of the larger kind
I was crusing around www.apug.org and found a link to a supplier of collodion supplies. I’ve been interested in this for some time, but have never taken the plunge.
http://lundphotographics.com/ seems to have a good range of supplies. Be sure to heed that safety warning since some of this stuff can kill you.
Click here for other large format and plate camera supplies at a discount.
Here’s a demo of how to mix a cyanotype mixture, coat paper with it, and expose it. The person that made the video sandwiched a negative over a UV light source.
Here is another source also printing with cyanotype:
To round this all out, here is a person working with cyanotype cloth with tea toning, first bleaching and then toning her print.
Though some think of those of us who are committed to film photography as anachronistic, film offers experiences that digital still can’t offer or can’t without much manipulation.
That’s not just snobbery, that’s the way it is. It’s a different medium.
While we’re all happy that film is still available, we have been losing emulsions and film sizes. That seems to be inevitable with the thirst for the quick fix that a digital camera offers.
With that said, that’s been the way it has been in photography since the beginning. Some processes replace others. We’ve had several different ways of making film and paper emulsions over the years. Some dedicated people keep the older processes alive after the general population moves on.
That’s where The Light Farm comes in. It’s tag line is: A Cooperative of Photographers – Artists, Scientists, Historians – Dedicated to the Renaissance of Handcrafted Silver Gelatin Emulsions
Just picking through some of the topics that are covered on the site are:
Paper and Coating
Digital Negatives
Kitchen Lab Emulsions
Contact Printing Paper
Printing Out Paper
Toning and Color Control
Silvergum Printing
Glass Negatives
Dry Plate Photography
Artisan Film Negatives
Odds & Ends
Literature List
Unpatented Pending
Historical Films
Galleries
For many people, currently available digital or film technology are satisfying enough.
Many others follow the quest to have total control, to have a distinct feel, to recreate the past, to preserve history, or to keep analog processes alive in a dwindling marketplace.
Lest you think this is totally impractical and that digital processes are totally eschewed, or at least incompatible with analog content, here’s an article that gives a nod to how computers and older processes can work well together. Silvergum Printing
Please excuse me, I have some more reading to do.
I’ve written before about Quinn Jacobson and Wet Plate Collodion photography, an all but forgotten technique of sensitizing sheets of glass and making exposures on that glass instead of our more modern plastic films. Jacobson practices and teaches this process.
Beginning as a reflection of his early life, the video transitioned to a good introduction of the techniques of wet plate photography. The video then transitioned again into an interview of his portraiture subjects.
These weren’t your ordinary subjects, the pretty people of life. Here his subjects are the people of his home town – people who generally would be considered the underbelly of society – criminals, mentally challenged, the physically and mentally handicapped. The type of people that a photographer generally leaves as soon as the photograph is taken. Here, however, the photographs were followed by interviews. These people were given a chance to tell a bit of their stories, a moving caption for the photographs. There was a sense of the dignity of the subject regardless of the trouble that person has had in life.
If you have a curiosity about old photographic techniques such as wet plate photography or if you’ve ever had the desire to see a subject as more than just the momentary focus of a camera, you might be interested in this two part video. I enjoyed it. I would have loved to have seen more.
I’ve never seen the process of making a bromoil print before. This is just fascinating stuff to me. It’s a very manual, labor intensive process and it’s beautiful.
Here’s a video on varnishing an ambrotype by Quinn Jacobson. This is very cool.
OK, so I can tell I’m addicted already. At least my chemical dependency is confined to photography. Now I guess I have to buy his book and DVD. I’m hooked. I must find a good camera though and I’ll be off to the races.
Here’s his website, http://collodion.com/
Here is a nice little overview video showing how to make, expose, and develop a tin type. I haven’t done this yet. I really need to get off my tail and do it. This looks quite enjoyable.
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