Your latest dag!

[Andy Stockton]

And now for my first “successful” daguerreotype. This one happened after two complete failures with way too short exposure times. This one was a re-fumed plate (thanks Irv) and I am still having a lot of trouble seeing the colors. I think it was a very faint green – and this was viewed under full light. Exposure was 30 sec at f2.3 EV 12.4 @ ISO 100. 145 mm lens. Developed in full sun for 2 hours and then 3.5 hours more under a Philips Halogena 70 Watt BR4 indoor flood lamp. This produces 1280 lumens giving an EV of 13.9 at 7 inches away.

 

I call it “Sea Creatures”. Here’s hoping for rapid improvement. 🙂

 

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[CasedImage]

This is my third plate format, 3.75 x 4.25, the proportions of which I like as they are like sixth plate which I think suits portraiture better than the skinny rectangle of quarter plate . Cue puns for how my portrait subjects look very wooden!

I had some problems with contamination lately which has been very frustrating but after much purging of all the operations it seems to be better. This plate looks a little bit better in the scan, it has less contrast than I would like.

Its a clad plate, galvanised (3.5 mins), I gave it 1 min of iodine (I’m finding as we head into summer here my iodine times are lengthening), 5 secs of bromine and then 10 secs of second iodine, a 13 sec exposure (light meter said 8 secs) but perhaps if I went to 15 it might have been better, perhaps cause of the red subject (see pic of shoot). Developed at 70 deg C for 8.5 minutes. Gilded till gold chloride solution boiled.

Overall it has a fuller tonal range than the Waharoa II plate i did recently but isn’t as punchy – it doesn’t leap of the plate and as visible from all angles as with that one.

 

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[corey r]

got a chance to sensitize and shoot some smaller plates this afternoon. the santa cruz weather is unnaturally warm for this time of the year. here’s hoping for success, pictures to follow

[corey r]

So I got too excited and forgot to filter the fixer/gold toner combo that i’ve been trying and got speckles on the image again, otherwise the plate itself looks great. Sorry for the terrible image quality. The scanner I used is terrible and wouldn’t let me make any real changes to scan settings.

 

I had polished the two quarter-plates that I had left back to copper in a few places, so I cut them down to fit in a great little 2×3 view camera that I have. The tall aspect ratio is really pleasing to me. I promise I’ll get better pictures of my work one of these days. I just have a hard time justifying putting money into more computer equipment when the fastest lens I have is only a 4.5. Camera gear first, then a scanner. Any way, I’m rambling about things that aren’t all that important.

 

I did get a good deal more blue tint to these images today. I think I could have shortened the exposures by a stop or two and developed into the night with a bulb instead of using the sun. The images that I

 

Also made an attempt at hand cutting a two layer mat for this while I was waiting for the image to come up, fairly sloppy. I think I’ll stick with the size for a while and have some mats made for me. Cutting glass on the other hand seems to be getting easier. Far less waste today. Only went through one small pane of salvaged window glass today.

 

Forgive me but I’m going to use the forum as a note book for a moment

exposure info:

ev: 14.9

exposure time: 2.5 minutes @ 2pm

UV index: internet says 4 but thats seems low

aperture: 4.7 w/127mm lens

dev time: 2 hours w/ 2 layers of rubylith

 

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[corey r]

oh, i fumed the plate to the 2nd yellow, verging on a golden-orange tint at the center

[Mike Robinson]

Hi All,

Here’s one I made yesterday. Its a hand tinted full plate that I call “Camera and Pencil”

[Mike Robinson]

Oops,

 

here’s the image

 

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[CasedImage]

Here’s mine from today, having some galvanising issues so didn’t gild this, will rebuff it. 45 secs 1 st iodine, 4 secs bromine, 11 secs second iodine. The problem with the gilding is stains, that at a certain angle show up in a sheen on the plate, also said sheen inhibits the punchy-ness of the plate.

 

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[CasedImage]

Here’s the plate with its ancestor next to it on the flat bed scanner. Back in July I was still under-developing plates and as photolytic has said, the small image particles from underdevelopment give a blue hue. Still if its not one thing its another with this process, now back to the buffing paddles and to give it less time in the galvanising tank…

 

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[photolytic]

Beautiful whole plate Mike.

Is that a clad silver plate?

I believe that previously the width of your clad copper limited you to half plate size.

Did you find a source of wider silver clad copper for your work?

Will you be selling clad whole plates now?

[Mike Robinson]

HI John,

thanks

I wish I could get a ready supply of clad silver at whole plate sizes!

It is still true that my clad supplier is limited to half plate size so I won’t be offering full plates anytime soon.

this plate I had to re-silver with my galvanizing to get an image.

exposure f/11, EV 8, 12 minutes.

Hg 184F 5 minutes

[CasedImage]

At the same scene again today as I wanted to better aspects of the plate from yesterday and Daguerre be praised, it happened. finally I am getting whites as white as in my best becquerel plates. This plate didn’t have the sheen/low level haze that the one did yesterday, I am always quite unsure how long to galvanise for and how much buffing to do post galvanising, but I seem to be getting there.

clad plate, galvanised 3 minutes, 40 secs iodine, 4 secs bromine, 10 secs 2nd iodine, F3.5 @ 5 secs, 8mins @ 70C, gilded.

 

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[TScaife84]

These are both my latest and my first dags. They all have their problems… but I can’t explain how happy I was to be making them. I made my first dag. on my 25th bday during Takashi Arai’s workshop in Philly.

6x7cm Becquerel Daguerreotype– Overexposed-

4×5″ Mercury Developed Daguerreotype- Not enough guilding solution/ skin contact

4×5″ Mercury Developed Daguerreotype- Model Moved/ mystery spot?

[photolytic]

Looks like a mercury spot caused by a drop of liquid mercury on the plate surface.

They usually form in the fixing bath. Sometimes you can knock the drop off the plate surface before fixing by holding the plate vertically and lightly banging the plate on a hard surface

[RonF]

Here’s my latest. I still need to treat it with gold chloride and then seal it. I’ll need to take the passe partout apart as I think that there are remnants of the old seal floating around, hence the dust.

The dag is on a reclaimed quarter plate.

…to digress a bit

I am no longer wiping any antique plates, as I am learning how to electroplate; but of course electroplating is proving challenging. I made one great plate “from, scratch”, and it worked to make a dag; but then I contaminated my plating solution (I think) as the subsequent three tries have not worked. The silver has been peeling off. One might think that means that I have not been cleaning/preparing the copper plates properly, but I am pretty sure that is not the case.

I was frustrated with the plating, so I decided to use an old quarter plate that I had previously prepared….

specs on this photo

I sensitized it until it was violet with some blue. I used a 100 W Halide light with an improvised reflector about 22″ from the center of the frame. I used an f 5.6 150mm lens. Exposed for 1 hr, 5 min.

 

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[RonF]

oh yeah; forgot to mention: developed becquerel 20 ” from 500 W halogen through amberlith. 2 hrs.

[CasedImage]

After at least a month of finding it impossible to do any image capture, I had a go with a ninth plate today, woefully overexposed view of Mother and cat, shall try again tomorrow with the sweltering summer sun we have here in NZ at the moment..

clad, galvanised for 3mins, 33 sec iodine, 4 sec bromine, 15 secs 2nd Iodine, 3 sec exp @ f3.5, 8 mins at 70c, ungilded

 

 

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[CasedImage]

Well this plate wasn’t a lot better than the last but enough to gild and seal, my new years resolution will be to keep shooting regularly so I don’t get so rusty..

 

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[Andy Stockton]

Over the holiday break I finished setting up to make 35 mm miniatures. The smaller plates are easier to handle for a beginner, and the camera I am using is much better than my large format. I had enough keepers to justify getting a scanner , but only time to scan one tonight.

 

Nutcrackers (Plate 1006)

18 Sec I2 to golden yellow

9.5 Sec f1.7 EV 14.0

Becquerel development 2 hours – Halogen lamp

 

 

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[corey r]

Hello gentlemen,

Just one for you today. Been really busy getting grad school applications ready and working at the university again this week, so I haven’t had much time to get stuff going. Another set of plates got dropped in the mail to me by Thad at Zappfe. New work next week I hope.

 

In the mean time here’s a new one that I shot a couple weeks ago. Quarter plate self-portrait. 5 minutes in direct sun. Tons of motion blur from checking my timer over and over. Not a well polished plate but what the heck. Practice is better than nothing. Probably going to wipe it at some point. Also shot a few 2″x3″ plates that came out less than great and wiped them already so no shots of those.

 

I guess i’ll re-post a really great looking one here too, documented it in a much better way for the grad school apps.

 

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[Andy Stockton]

Here are a couple more plates I took over the holiday break. The first was overexposed, the second I was happier with.

 

Stag (Plate 1005)

23 Sec I2 to golden yellow

28 Sec f1.7 EV 14.2

Becquerel development 2 hours – Halogen lamp

 

Stag (Plate 1012)

18 Sec I2 to golden yellow

5 Sec f1.7 EV 14.9

Becquerel development 2 hours – Halogen lamp

 

They still seem somewhat blue to me and I am wondering if I should be developing longer than two hours. Comments welcome.

 

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[Jon Lewis]

Great progress Andy! I’d say you’ll need to increase your development time in order to lose the blue cast. From my experience developing 2-3 hours will yield a bluish image and 8-9 hours will be a bit warm. I have yet to succeed consistently in getting a neutral colored image though I tend to lean more towards the warm end of the spectrum.

This image was developed for 2.5 hours:

This one was developed for 8 hours (though some of it’s color comes from excessive gilding):

[Andy Stockton]

Thanks for the comparison pictures Jon. Any other Becquerel users willing to chime in with their development times? Is the “fogging” that people refer to with long development times due to heat? Or can it happen to a long developed plate even when cooled during development?

Wow – 8 hours – no wonder people want to learn mercury development!

[Jon Lewis]

This is the only fogging I’ve had and (as far as I can tell) it was due to the plate heating up under the developing light. It was developed for 3 hours and I managed to give myself a nice burn while trying to pick up the plate. Now that I use a big copper heatsink under the plate and two fans (one blowing through the heatsink and one cooling the entire area) I haven’t had any more fogging issues, even after developing for 9 hours.

I’m very curious to hear what other people have experience in terms of becquerel fogging and developing times.

[Pobboravsky]

Re: Becq. dev’ment, heat, long dev’ment times

I wonder if a 2-dimensional array of tightly-spaced red LED’s would overcome some of shortcomings of using a tungsten light source for Becq. Dev’ment. LEDs give off very little heat so a fan would not be needed. Rubylith would also not be needed. And I wonder if dev’ment time might be reduced if the array was spaced ca. 1/2 to 1 inch away from the plate. Hours long use of a tungsten lamp + fan eats up a lot of electrical energy and is very inefficient. Red LEDs are far more efficient.

Irv

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