First Hg dag, please critique

[phuphuphnik]

Hi, This is the first non Beq dag I have tried. It is also the first image with the new camera, so there is a whole lot that went right the first time. I iodized to first yellow, Bromine to dark yellow, then iodine to just rose. The exposure is 10 seconds at somewhere between f5 and 7 (this is what I estimate my lens to be) It was bright overcast. Then over 150 deg F Hg for 3 min.

Here is what I see: It is underexposed. That is an easy fix. It looks like I over developed it, as it is a slate colour and has some spotting in the upper right. It also looks like I had the darkroom too bright, also indicated by the slate appearance. What do you guys think?

 

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[Andy Stockton]

No personal experience with Hg, so I won’t comment on your questions, but congratulations on reaching that milestone.

[Mercury]

Welcome to HgWorld! Yah, I’d say there WAS a whole lot that went right the first time… congratulations!

A few comments and then you’ll just have to get back to work. The “slate” you mention looks like a bit of mercury “frosting” in non-image areas. Every mercury pot is different, so solving it will be a process of elimination. Your development time doesn’t sound unreasonable, I usually go for 3-4 minutes at 175F or so, and frosting begins to occur in my pot at some point after that. (Some workers go a lot longer at a lower temp, who can argue with Irving Pobboravsky and Mike Robinson?, which I’m now experimenting with.) You’ll just have to experiment to find your pot’s optimum time/temp. It can also have to do with humidity in the pot and/or lab, and/or condensation on the plate, and/or the distance from mercury-surface to the plate. No simple answers. Oh heck, and excess bromine too, but I don’t think that is a factor in your case.

Another thing you’ll have to find is your optimum sensitization. By the sound of it, your sensitization of this plate would have rendered it somewhat contrasty which might account for some of the lack of shadow detail. (And it does look a bit underexposed.) A somewhat ‘heavier’ sensitization might help. My baseline starting point is Iodine to just hints of rose, then Br to a first noticeable change to a deeper rose, and then back 1/2 the first I time. Observing changes just within the first yellow is more difficult than observing the change from yellow to rose, so for me, the initial I-Br sensitization becomes more consistent plate-to-plate. I know others have different and very successful ways of managing plate contrast, but I try to keep my first Iodine and Br consistent, and vary plate contrast with the second I time: shorter second I for more contrast and longer for less, always calculated as a fraction of the first Iodine time. (I learned this trick from Tom Young of Colorado.) Varying contrast with second I time also changes plate sensitivity, faster with shorter second I, progressively less sensitive as second I time is extended. Again, you’ll have to see if this works for you, and if it doesn’t it doesn’t. It’s the Nature of the Process for each of us to find our own best way.

Since you are now targeting two color-points when sensitizing (first I color and Br color,) standardizing the light with which you view these colors is critical. I use a 20 watt halogen lamp 18 inches from a piece of white mat board, and view the reflection of the mat board in the plate. Jerry Spagnoli uses almost no light at all. We both manage to make good daguerreotypes (OK, him more so than me.) The important thing is consistency.

You mentioned your darkroom being “too bright”… with safelight? If you are working under safelight, and if the light is safe for modern photographic papers, then it’s safe for daguerreotypes. I use an 8×10-inch Kodak 1A light-red safelight (designed for blue-sensitive graphic arts films, similar spectral sensitivity to dags) with a 15 watt watt bulb. It’s pleasantly bright, and makes everything in my small lab quite visible. I make sure the plate gets no white-light exposure after it goes in the box for second Iodine. Again, this is just how I work, with all due respect to other daguerreians’ successful methods.

A couple of my personal “rules to live by” as a mercury daguerreian (I only say that, and sad to say, because I’ve never been a becquerel daguerreian):

1) Put five daguerretoypists and a cat in a room and lock the door until the debate stops. Only the cat will leave the room knowing the “right way” to make daguerreotypes, and it won’t tell you.

2) In the immortal words of Irving Pobboravsky, in all things daguerreian, “Consult the Process.”

Keep going, you’ve made a great start!

Merc

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