Your latest dag!

[Andy Stockton]

Do you put your digital interpositive for the contact printing in direct contact with the iodized surface of the plate? I thought it was fragile?

[jdanforth]

Yes, I put the positive directly on the iodized plate. It’s fragile, sure, but it’s fine if you’re careful.

[photolytic]

Hi Jon,

There is nothing wrong with wanting to print Dags from other photographs, so long as they are properly identified as prints. Both Ken Nelson and Jerry Spagnoli have mentioned the advantages of this technique and the technique of using contact printing has been addressed on this forum before. The contact prints or photograms of translucent objects on Daguerreotype plates produced by Adam Fuss are marvelous and world famous.

How come your customer didn’t want blue corrosion on the mat too?

Might I suggest that a to be had short cut to creating those spots found on bad images might be to sprinkle that sulfur powder on the trans before your print the Dag from it, thereby adding instant spots and corrosion in one quick step.

Seriously, the general public and the news media repeatedly reinforce the stereotype that all old photographs are grainy, spotted and out of focus, whereas the opposite is true of most Daguerreotypes. Well preserved and properly encased, the Daguerreoytpe has the potential to outlast most if not all other photographic images including digital ones.

Up until now it has been one of the missions of the Daguerreian Society to emphasize the exquisite beauty, extreme detail, and longevity of the Daguerreotype image. I propose this question to our modern Daguerreotypists. Do we want to abandon the noble cause of the Daguerreian Society and instead perpetuate the myth that Dags are worn out relics, ready for the trash bin, or do we want to support efforts to preserve and protect these valuable historical and cultural records? How about a show of hands here.

[CasedImage]

In regards to the show of hands and with respect Jon – each to their own. Photography has always been driven by the dollar and ideological decree’s on content for a artist community (however worthy) tend not mesh with that. Its such a demanding process in terms of resources that it has to pay its way and so what the client wants, the client gets. Ageing of dags for commercial gain, occurs to within the membership of the Daguerreian society too. I have been told by dag dealers that after to vigourously chemically cleaning a plate they have let it sit, unsealed but with the mat and cover glass sitting on it, in a airtight container with hard boiled eggs. This to add some plausible sulphiding around the mat edge and to cap it all off then resealing it using strips of vintage 1850’s newspaper… the evil that men do..

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[jdanforth]

John, the mat for the first piece was treated to the sulfur-bath for aging. It’s not very obvious in the scan. Good idea with the sulfur on the transparency! I hadn’t thought to try it that way!

All of these treatments are disclosed (with apologies to preservationists of the future) at the time of sale. I consider the acts that Alan describes as absolutely despicable!

For many, “old” equals “aged”. You’re completely correct about the misconception. I had the opportunity yesterday to list some ambrotypes and tintypes on eBay. Knowing that the images were far more stable than daguerreotypes I decided to remove the cover glasses for scanning. All went well and they’re safely back behind their glass. The point is that the images looked AMAZING when removed from their crappy glass tombs! I cleaned up the glass and will send them off happily and confidently.

[corey r]

Jon, those look great for prints! I’m considering the process for some of my ultra low light images that i’ve made in caves that I would like dags of. I love shooting under the earth but just can’t see any way of bouncing enough light into the holes i crawl in to make a dag, and hauling enough hot lights into such a delicate environment is completely out of the question.

 

Any way, here’s a couple new ones from me. The first is the first portrait that I’ve tried from about 3 weeks ago. The polish was weak and my gilding solution had been sitting a while. Disturbing to watch the image get grainy from bits of gold settling out on the surface.

 

The second is a bird skull and jaw from earlier this week. Got a way better polish on it so less spotting. Still under dirty glass. Just a tiny bit of chemical marking in the lower right corner.

 

Just ordered some beautiful redwood burl veneer to make mats so no more ugly paper ones on the next batch I post. Sorry about the finger smudges and scratches on the glass. I haven’t gotten a chance to make it to the glass shop even though its less than a block away.

 

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[CasedImage]

Hi Corey, I used to look after a photographic negative collection at a museum which included 20,000 negs that were taken to document Howard Carter’s excavation and opening of Tutankhamun tomb. So the story goes that being short on electric light in some instances, they brought light down into the tombs by a series of mirrors to take the shots. Nice story if true but you might still have a hard time of it with a dag exposure.

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[CasedImage]

Today’s effort, many faults, a tide mark from drying the plate after galvanising, some stains in gilding and of course the spots etc, but this week has been a succession of dreary dull grey days here, so I decided to kept it . A clad plate galvanised for 3 mins, 40 secs of Iodine, 4 of Bromine, a 13 sec exposure, mercurial development at 50 degrees C for 12 minutes and gilded till I got bored of it. I put it in a hand painted passe partout that I made 7 years ago, which like the plate isn’t totally up to scratch but together they are quite bearable on the eye. The subject is a cherry blossom in our garden which is heralding the coming summer here in NZ that I am eagerly awaiting.

 

 

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[jdanforth]

That’s really pretty, Alan. Ever considered tinting? I’m looking forward to trying it out whenever I can manage to get back into the studio.

Corey, I like your images quite a bit. Why is there a distinct brown/gold cast on them? The scanner?

[corey r]

Alan, its just from the poor lighting that i used while shooting the digitals on my desk. Just a reading lamp and a borrowed digital camera. The bird skull has the slightest blue cast to it in person, but not strong.

[CasedImage]

Well not quite sure what happened here, i think the measles are from trying to remove a unused galvanising layer that I thought was too thin and re-did it with a thicker one. The spots were there before it went into the fix. I think the sensitisation was a little uneven, as well as too much bromine. It actually looks really nice in the hand so I had to resist the urge to gild it. Back to the buffing paddles with this one..

 

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[corey r]

Yesterday was full of frustrations on the bdag front. To be expected i guess with the experimentation. I decided to use a 4×5 ultra macro that i had built some time ago and see if i could get a good dag out of it. after calculating exposure for the extreme bellows extension, the exposure should have been somewhere around 55 minutes. WAY over exposed to the point of solarization. A couple of dags i’ve made have had the slightest hint of blue to them but this thing was dark vermillion in the highlights. Buffed that one back.

Also tried shooting the pitcher of a carnivorous plant but the whole thing is red and green with the 4×5 that I’ve had at least decent results with. I compensated a half stop from my usual exposure time for the same light and bellows extension. developed for 5 hours and nearly nothing at all, just the tiniest pinpoints developing where there had been water droplets on the plant.

sunday is another free day, trying the plant again at least.

[CasedImage]

well this scene is becoming a bit of a saga for me, I polished a new plate today and went back to it. It was mostly overcast today and I ended up under exposing it, which I think was the lack of UV as my light meter was indicating all would be fine. I lengthened the development for this one almost to frosting but in the end it is was what it is. I guess its not so bad but the spotty one recently posted has much more visual impact in the hand, though thats a little to do with composition.

 

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[Jon Lewis]

These are getting better and better! Have you ever taken out a UV meter along with your light meter? Or could you put a UV only filter over the light meter?

[CasedImage]

I have a UV meter, it measures 9 levels and also a 3 digit level reading. It measured in the upper portion of level three, the exposure was three seconds, i think 5 would have done it. The other plate was 3 secs exposure to but that was bright sunlight and it had a lesser development time (12 mins @ 50 degC, with the underexposed one I took it to 14.5 mins). It occurred to me what the spots were on the other plate – I put in a cooler pack to see if it would guard against latent image fading on the car trip home and there was some condensation on the plate. With the most recent plate I better assisted the process by driving faster!

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[Andy Stockton]

So many variables. Was your cooler pack just a blue-ice insulated cooler, or one of those 12 Volt thermoelectric plug in jobbies? I have been thinking of one of those with a big sack of silica gel in it as a portable plate carrier. You still have to deal with getting the plate back to ambient without condensation however.

That UV meter sounds expensive. What kind is it?

Heading for Boston tomorrow to drop off my daughter at Tufts. She and her mother are alternating between excitement and despair every hour or so. I don’t imagine I will be getting much done in the coming week as I am cast in the “steady as a rock role”. Oh fun.

[photolytic]

I stressed the importance the keeping plates dry in my article but apparently with little success. All it took was one post by another Daguerreotypist that “one of the best Dags I ever made was taken in the rain” and all caution went out the window. If you carry a mirror (or bare Dag plate) in your cooler and it fogs up when you take it out and breath on it, you’re Dags are in trouble. Don’t put silca gel in the cooler. Instead put the desicator and the Dag in zip-lock or other re-sealable plastic bag and put the bag in the cooler. When it’s time to remove the bag from the cooler, let it warm up for 15-30 min before taking the Dag out of the bag. While the Dag is still cool, say below 20C, you have an hour of so before latent image fading becomes a problem so it’s better to ere on the high side and wait a little longer if you have stored the Dag at freezing temperatures (-10 to 0C). With practice you can accurately judge whether the Dag was cool enough by touching the back with your finger. For best results it should be just barely cool to the touch. Keep a series of Dags in individual bags and defrost them one at a time, storing the remaining Dags in the fridge. That way you can tell if the defrosting time was too long or too short and adjust the remaining Dag warm-ups accordingly.

The type of cooler doesn’t matter much. I have the thermoelectric type and it works quite well but will drain your car battery if you stop too long during the trip. For short trips in the winter, just keeping the windows open on the car is often sufficient if the temps are in the +10-+20 range. Remember not the put the Dag container in the sun. Especially if it is a black camera bag or the Dags will get much warmer than ambient temperature.

A UV meter may be a waste of money. Irving Pobboravsky measured the maximum Dag film sensitivity and found that it coincided with maximum light absorbance of the first yellow AgI coating color or 420nm.

[CasedImage]

Andy, the UV meter is the one that’s in the tech gallery page for light meters, it cost only $20.

Jon, I did have both the cooler bag and freezer pack in sip lock bags and separated in the cool bag by some packing in the cooler bag, but no desicator. I must say I’d rather than freeze/cool plates I’d prefer to work out a mobile darkroom.

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[corey r]

So i’m going to try shooting some plants again today, the big problem is that they are mostly red and green. does any one have a bdag test shot of a color wheel or similar visual reference for the sensitivity of bdags to color?

[photolytic]

Corey, No color wheel but I’ve shot flowers with surpising results. Yellow seems to be the most difficult color. This Dag of a bright yelow sunflower (EV 15) required a 4 min exoosure @f4.7 on a mercury developed I/Br plate.

Yet some of the flowers around this bird bath were recorded as solarized blue after only a 10 second exposure @f/4.7.

 

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[Pobboravsky]

Hi John –

Let me quote me when I saw your sunflower d-type. “Ooh, wow”. Nice going.

Irv

[Pobboravsky]

Hi Alan,

Could you please measure the UV Index through a lens and again with the lens removed? The lens need not be on a camera.

And could you also do the same using two pieces of window glass instead of a lens?

What a powerful website this is for gathering information from a wide daguerreian audience! Mike Robinson said he made daguerreotypes using UV lights for portraits and the exposure time was about the same as with north light illumination. Now, I will not say this publicly, but Mike is a very clever fellow. But, I assume he used a lens.

Kudos to you, Jon, Andy and the daguerreian community.

Irv

[CasedImage]

Well there you go another myth debunked – 0 reading through the lens and glass.

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[Pobboravsky]

Alan: what were the reading(s) without the lens or glass? Irv

[CasedImage]

Morning sun here, level 3 on the meter (moderate range), 075 mW/m2

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