Fuming my first plate

[csant]

Hello,
I got around to fuming my first plate for a Bequerel dag. Well, I got also around to making the dag (only a rather poor snapshot there…), but that is less an issue – it came out fairly decently (I was actually expecting a worse failure…). But what bothered me was the iodine fuming.

I filled the tray in the fuming box with iodine crystals, waited for some 10 minutes, and placed the plate in its holder after having slightly warmed it with a hair-drier. After some 20 seconds (that is a time I seem to have read as being a good starting point) I checked progress – nothing, plate just as before. Tried another 20 seconds, and still nothing. After another 20 seconds I seemed to sense a slight shift towards yellow, so I tried another 15 seconds. Still yellow. Tried some more 20 seconds, and it was now a fairly deep yellow. Another 20 seconds, and a slightly deeper yellow… For some reason I got afraid I might be way too far with fuming (I never seem to have read about such long fuming times), so I proceeded to exposure (15 minutes in open shade at f/5.6, gray measuring of EV10) and development (1.5 hours in direct sun).

Now I wonder what was happening… Was it too cold (room temperature at about 18°C)? Or do I need to wait longer for enough fumes to develop in the box? Or was I already in the second cycle when I started noticing some colour change? I am in a room with 30W tungsten light – does its slight yellow cast preclude me from seeing the colour shifts of the first cycle? Or can 2 minutes iodine fuming be still not enough? (I was aiming for “magenta”, which I read being a good fuming state…)

[Bakody]

Hi!
Maybe the distance between your plate and iodine is too much, but first wait longer then 10 minutes before fuming!
I don’t leave iodine in the fuming box as well, because it not sealed well, but at least about 1 hours earlier I prepare it, I put it in. Until that I’m polishing, set up the camera, etc…
Now at winter time because of the low temperature it’s takes for me longer (much longer) then you to fume the plates, so I think if you are keep checking the colour of the plate it’s still fine to fume it longer time. Just check it regularly.

http://daginhun.blogspot.com/
 http://www.facebook.com/DagerrotipiaDaguerreotype

[Andy Stockton]

Hi csant-

Bakody’s comment about having the iodine in the box longer than 10 minutes is a good one.

I would also mention a problem I had when starting out in case it applies. I had a very hard time seeing the first cycle initially because it can be so faint. What helped me was to have an unfumed plate to compare against. What worked best was to lay the fumed and unfumed plates side by side and shine a light on them both so it reflects on a piece of white paper tacked on the wall above them. Then the color difference really stands out.

[csant]

Thank you very much for the replies and suggestions! I tried putting the iodine into the box about an hour prior to fuming, and I took an unfumed plate with me to compare – it took about 20 seconds to turn yellow, then another 20ish to get a deeper yellow. But then things moved on – first at the edges it got slightly more red, and then turned to magenta as the edges moved towards blue. A bit more, and I was done – all in all maybe a minute and some more. Both suggestions are much welcome, thank you! And having an unfumed plate is great for noticing the slow shifts… As I write, the dag is developing…

[Bakody]

Good to hear it, that this time was better.
Maybe the fuming was uneven because you heat the plate and it cool down unevenly…

http://daginhun.blogspot.com/
 http://www.facebook.com/DagerrotipiaDaguerreotype

[csant]

Thanks, that might be!
(Never mind that I screwed up the plate in gilding – but exposure and development were successful… I feel like I am on a good path, even though it is frustrating to lose a plate after a day’s work, specially in a season in which you manage to make one plate on each sunny day…)

[Bakody]

You don’t need to gild a Becquerel developed daguerreotype!!! Unnecessary.

http://daginhun.blogspot.com/
 http://www.facebook.com/DagerrotipiaDaguerreotype

[csant]

Oh… how come? Jason Greenberg Motamedi’s guide talks about gilding, and mentions that the images “are more archival, much more resistant to damage, and have more apparent depth and richer tones”. In another old thread on this forum I read that in Becquerel dags the image is made out of halides, while in a Hg dag the image is metallic. My next thought was that in gilding an image, it might be a bit more resistant to damage – it was quite a surprise (I’d almost say “shock”) to realize that a freshly made dag can be literally wiped away with a soft cotton wad… I thought that when gilding, at least part of that halide image might be transformed into metal (gold) – am I completely wrong? If it is really true that no gilding is needed, and that there won’t be any improvement when gilding, I am quite satisfied with my progress so far… (and as soon as I don’t screw up an image, I’ll even post a result…)

[Bakody]

On the surface of B-dags are “silver slat” (nothing to evaporate from it) and on the surface of M-dags is amalgam, mercury evaporate, need to protect it with gilding. Nice discussion about this in the forum already: http://www.cdags.org/forums/topic/importance-of-gilding-for-durability/

http://daginhun.blogspot.com/
 http://www.facebook.com/DagerrotipiaDaguerreotype

[csant]

Ah, nice discussion! Thank you very much!

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