First attempt – need some help

[macgabhan]

Hello all

I am a newbie to the making of dags. Have tried to make by contact printing using the UV plate burner that I use for Palladium printing. I get a very clear ‘printing out’ image which leaves me with quite a faint image if I fix it immediately. If I try to develop the image with the Becquerel technique (using Rubylith) I get no image at all no matter how long I have exposed for (ranging from 75 seconds through to 40 minutes), the printing out image having faded almost immediately – though I did get a faint image with a couple of attempts using two 60W angle poise lamps. I am using a 500W halogen builders lamp to ‘develop’. THe plates are sensitised for about 3.5 minutes and give the first cycle pinkish/purple colour.

I sense that I may be close to getting an actual daguerreotype, but have hit something of a brick wall and would be grateful for any help that you are able to give

DJS

[phuphuphnik]

You are starting out just like I did. pretty much exactly, in fact.

Use the same 500W light to expose the plate. I have my light about 15 inches above the plate. What I did was sensitize for 30 seconds and look at the colour in dim light, then another 30 seconds and so on. Once you know the difference between what the first cycle and second cycle looks like you’ll be able to tell the difference. This takes a lot of practice as it can be really subtle.

The link below is my progress for my first dag. I’ll keep the album public for a couple days.

The image titles explain what is going on. These were contact printed from a positive in the manner I just described.

http://s57.photobucket.com/albums/g209/phuphuphnik/dags/

Once you have the colour you like, put the plate under a positive (well, for starters a negative is fine)with a piece of glass over it. I’d start with a 30 second exposure. Then remove the negative, and put the rubylith over it taped in place. I seem to recall that 2 layers of rubylith…anyhoo… Turn the light back on and have a fan on the plate. Heat kills dag plates. Give it a good hour (longer, but we all like fast results) then clear in the hypo. Use distilled water.

You are quite close. Remember, an over exposed plate, contact printed with a positive will be negative. This doesn’t mean you’ll get good results trying to make a positive out of a negative, though. Worry about gilding later…

edit: oh yeah, Beq development can take *hours* like, ‘go take a nap’ hours.

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