Your latest dag!

[Pobboravsky]

Thanks Alan,

My guess would have been that most of the UV would be stopped by the lens but that some small fraction would get through to the plate.

What is the highest UV Index you have measured in the past?

Quote from Mike Robinson:

I once did a workshop at the Amon Carter Museum in Texas and the only lighting we had available were UV bulbs (those horrible blacklight bulbs that were used for POP printing and the like). The exposures were comparable to my north light daylight, BUT the skin tones were very unflattering.

---

I wonder if the UV bulbs he used gave off blue and violet light as well as UV. And that is why he got comparable exposures to north skylight. The mystery remains.

Again, thank you for your help.

Irv

[CasedImage]

When living in the far south of NZ I have seen this UV meter get up to level 9 , the 3 digit level secondary reading on it was over 800, on the meter it is characterised as “extreme”. Apparently NZ has some of the highest rates of UV and also the highest level of skin cancer per capita. This is supposed to be due to our proximity to the hole on the ozone over Antarctica. Last year we were in Ireland for 6 months in “summer” (it rained at some stage of every day for 6 months..) and I never saw the light meter climb above level 4.

There is a pic of the meter in the tech galleries ( http://www.cdags.org/?page_id=172 ) which has displayed the same reading as the one I got and posted this morning!

www.CasedImage.com

[photolytic]

Alan, Is your UV meter reading incident light?

Can it also take a reading of the UV light reflected from your subject?

Maybe you should try a pinhole lens to capture UV on a Dag Plate.

Compare that to a lens shot at f/45 to f/60 to see if there is any difference.

I think Irv said he tried a pinhole camera once.

A quartz lens is an expensive alternative.

You can put this one on your Nikon for only $4500 USD.

http://jenoptik-inc.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=27&Itemid=40

[Mercury]

Hello all,

I believe Grant Romer experimented with a Zeiss UV-Sonnar quartz lens on a Hasselblad back in the 80’s. In my recollection his results were similarly inconclusive, i.e., no discernible increase in speed.

[CasedImage]

Hi John, it probably measures incident light, it really only works when you point it straight at the sun and tells you of a overall level of UV, most reflected light scenes give a zero reading.

www.CasedImage.com

[corey r]

holy blue b-dags batman! i shot today with a second cycle yellow to slight-orange with a nice jump in speed from 5 min to 3 min at f4.5 in full sun. Developed for an hour and a half. The image came out beautifully but incredibly blue. I had no idea that they could be that intensely blue. Maybe a longer developing time? maybe a shorter exposure with a still longer developing time? post pictures as soon as my housemate gets home with his digital…

[CasedImage]

good stuff Corey , keep it up – I sense a new gallery page coming on..

I used to get blue bdags as well, I must of sorted out the issue as my latter bdags didn’t have it. Off the top of my head I would say it need more development, the rubylith can make it difficult to tell what’s going on there.

www.CasedImage.com

[Jon Lewis]

I usually sensitize to the second yellow with a redish tinge and found that I need about 6-8 hours otherwise they end up varying shades of blue. My exposures about 30 seconds at f/4.7 in full sun (15 EV).

[corey r]

no celebrating yet, i’m running out of plates at the moment. been working off of the same three plates for the last 5 or so shooting sessions. one of them buffed back to copper this morning and another is really close.

after fully drying down, the image that was very blue is certainly underexposed. I should have just started developing while i was still at the beach. the drive that normally takes me about 20 minutes took me an hour and 45. i had way less daylight left when i got home than i wanted. developed for a little over an hour and the image looked like it was coming up very strong. I should have just trusted my experience that an hour is not a long enough exposure instead of my eyes telling me different and popped the plates under the 150w bulb i use when sooting too late in the day.

I’m so thankful for this forum being here. the information that you all share about your personal dag trials makes this a whole lot less discouraging. well its time to start stuffing the piggy bank and putting some cash away for a second round of plates. maybe shell out the extra money for the solid silver as opposed to plated this time? may actually save me some cash in the long run.

Jon, Alan, Larry and everyone else, thanks again.

-Corey

I’ll see if the digital will pick up anything from today’s thin plate, would have been a lovely image…

[drdag]

The platers cannot have put much silver on, my ‘plated’ plates have lasted at least 50 polishes each and no sign of copper.

[botticelli1972]

Corey, I vote for solid silver while you are learning. They are very soft and easy to bend/dent though. To make them stiffer on 1/2 plates I epoxy them to sheet brass, kind of a homemade clad plate. They last forever if you do not drop them. You must start development as soon as you pull the holder from the camera, or the image will degrade fast. That was most likely a major source of the thin blue image problem. I have several glass plates with amberlith taped to the edges and I put them over the holder and use binder clips at the edges to hold them on, then just remove the dark slide.-Larry

[CasedImage]

Well I was out there again today with my trusty UV meter, which got up to level 6 today.., but that aside I think I have a keeper from the 4 goes I have had on this scene. Another quarter plate it was galvanised for 3.5 minutes, Iodine for 1 min, Bromine 5 secs, back over the Iodine for 10 seconds. Exposure was 3 seconds at F3.5, development for 16 mins at around 52 degrees C ( I use a alcohol lamp and when I’m not paying attention it ranges a bit) and gilded till bubbles rise through the solution.

There’s a range of issues that I still need to improve on but this plate makes me feel that I’ve finally arrived at where I wanted to be when I started aspiring towards the process and that was 10.5 years ago and its been 6 years since I made my first image on my own…

Also attached here is the scene, more images and a movie over at CasedImage.com/about

 

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[Jon Lewis]

Congratulations! It’s amazing how much detail you got in the red figure. I especially like the guy peeking out from the right. 🙂

 

[botticelli1972]

Nice shot, Alan I noticed you are using a box camera with out the benefits of rise/tilt ect. Do you think the “freedom” from having to make perspective corrections is a bonus? I was thinking that the early practitioners used fixed cameras and got good work from them, though with such short DOF lenses a movement might be helpfull. Currently I shoot with a no-name 1940’s 4×5 with limited movements. How many others are using fixed box type cameras, and do you like them?-Larry

[CasedImage]

Hi Larry, well its not exactly point and shoot but there are a few less considerations and yes I don’t miss them. I’m getting two landscape lenses for the camera and that’s enough of a great leap forward for me! A scene like this though I would probably still prefer the petzval effect. Another reason for using a sliding box is the rigidity of them, the lenses are quite heavy. I had both my cameras made around specific lenses. With the sixth plate, Ivan made a cha-cha stereo attachment which extends its use nicely.

With both cameras I built mirror add on’s as I just can’t “see” composition when its upside down on the ground glass, which does have the tendency to look is if I’m shooting with a Rollei – at hip height so I can look down into the camera.

www.CasedImage.com

[CasedImage]

This one is of my Kaiako of Te Reo (teacher of Maori Language), in her korowai (feather cloak) with a bone carving in her hair and a pounamu (NZ greenstone) pendant.

The image is good in some aspects, but I have that blue cast coming in the skin tones, but the whites are quite white and blacks are also good. I extended the development 15 mins @ 50 deg C but maybe not far enough. It may be that Maori skin tone needs more exposure than caucasian.

Also the black velvet background shows up less than perfect plate polish very easily.

 

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[photolytic]

Alan,

Nice portrait. Regarding the bluish cast, have you tried more bromine?

Extending the second iodine fuming after turning off all white lights (safelight only) will reduce contrast and solarization. This may reduce the plate speed slightly, so you might have to increase the exposure time when you do this.

[CasedImage]

Hi John, Yes I should have curtailed my usual zest for contrast. The blue tint to the sitters skin on her chest and arm isn’t solarisation, the feathers are pure white next to it. I have put this problem that has long plagued my plates to a lack of development and so I dropped my mercury temperature (used to be 70 deg C) to 50 deg C and extended the development (used to be 3-4 mins) to 15 mins. I did this so there would be more of a window before getting to mercury frosting in the shadows. It seems to have worked well with the latest shots (eg. Waharoa) but in this portrait there is a remnant of the problem. Overall the plate is much easier to see than the plates I had last year in Ireland when I first started the mercurial process. I sure time and more experience with it and it will get sorted, especially with helpful tips folk like you are suggesting.

www.CasedImage.com

[photolytic]

Hi Alan,

I like contrast too. It is what gives Dags their eye-poping appeal.

Don’t give up you quest for it.

Solarization comes in many suttle forms for which the term solar may not seem appropriate.

Generally all bluish tints are caused by a superabundance of small image particles.

I noticed that in your portrait the tones in the lower half of the plate, containiing the white flowers and her lower arms, are warmer and lack any bluish overtones. I suggest that this part of the plate may have received slightly more bromine fuming due possibly to uneven buffing. A slight increase in overall bromine might have eliminated the bluish cast in the center of the plate.

I am a bit surprised that you are getting these bluish tones since the plate was galvanized.

Proponents of galvanizing have claimed that one of it’s benefits is the elimination of solarization and the formation of purer whites.

[CasedImage]

That’s an interesting definition of blue tints, rather helpful. The cloak has feathers and and beads along its border which are lack the blue tint, but the skin right next to it has the blue tint in some areas. I think overall the plate just need to be developed longer and with a lesser contrast plate the white feathers and beads may not solarised with extra development? I would re-polish this plate but I might have to try again with another plate for the sake of posterity – this is very very probably the first daguerreotype portrait of Maori in 150 years and there were some very fine ones back in the day.

www.CasedImage.com

[CasedImage]

Well I went back to my favoured scene of late today and re-shot the other of the gateway figures that I had under exposed. Very bright sunny day and I thought it was going to be exposed when I gave it a full two seconds exposure. Back at home in the post development wash I thought it was good but in the water it looked like a little too much bromine. So I gilded it with a fury and hey presto when it was dry it turned out to be my best yet. Taking John’s advice on the cause of blue tints I had further extended development to 17 minutes, I am learning to deal with my fear of mercury frosting. Soon to be available in my new online store at Casedimage.com….

 

 

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[jgmotamedi]

My first traditional daguerreotype in over two years!

It is underexposed and underdeveloped, but I am delighted that I have a recognizable image. More soon.

Details:

Quarter-Plate Daguerreotype

Iodine: yellow with red edges

Bromine: red with slight yellow interior

Exposure: 1:30 @ f5.6 with 8 55w Florescent bulbs

Development: 2:00 @ 176F

 

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[Andy Stockton]

Bravo. Although I understand the need for exposure control so that your image is faithful to your concept in creating it – I personally have a great love for very dark images. I like this a lot.

[Pobboravsky]

Hi Jason,

I say Bravo! as well. For a first image after 2 years it is clear you know what you are doing and the Daguerreian muse was in your court.

Irv

[CasedImage]

Something of an experiment from today, this quarter plate is an electroplated one made back in the 1970’s, brass plated with copper then the silver. I sanded the silver on the back down and emersion galvanised it twice, 40 secs iodine, 5 bromine, 25 secs second iodine, 2 sec exposure, 16 mins development @ 50 deg C and gilded. Not sure what to make of it, it seems quite a different sort of plate from the clad ones. Its taken with a portrait lens, housed in one of my reverse painted passe partout and half plate cases.

 

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