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Regular glass has a green tint to it – easiest to see when you look at the edge. This is because of the iron oxides in the glass, you can get low iron glass – its not very environmentally friendly – they use arsenic in the production process to get rid of the iron oxides. One of the commerical names for the high spec version of this glass is called borafloat, waterwhite is another one. A dag behind white glass does look a lot nicer and there are conservation advantages too – the high spec glasses are less prone to weeping – when the silicates leach out of the glass over long periods of time. Another advantage for me is that when painting a white passe partout I don’t have to color balance the white to pink so that when reverse painted onto the coverglass it appears as white should do, i.e. no green tint.

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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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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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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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This model fits up to 3″ wide lens, it comes with a bit of foam which allows it to hold on to my sixth plate lens. I fitted it with some card and velvet for my third plate lens and will do the same for the sixth plate. It fits very snugly on the lens so doesn’t move about.

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So I guess this sort comes under this topic, but here’s a new piece of equipment for my third plate caemra. Its a shutter that works on gravity (and a rubber band to a lesser degree), quite handy for faulty vintage shutters or when there was never one at all, as is the case with the petzval lenses. More pics and a video on my website journal

 

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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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Thought I would resurrect this thread for posterity. I was curious to see where the idea for the exhibit came from and this is the embryo of it. So wierd to look back at it and now look at the images of the exhibit. It goes to show the beneficial effect of cdags.org and the internet age is having on the genre, its nice to extrapolate and think where will we be in another years time….

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Hi John, the image is on the exhibits main page – image 16 of the 35 images there, cropped to just the cabinet.

I have added it also to the artists page of the exhibit, under Hill/Hurlock/Robinson

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Edited photo’s now on the exhibits main page and another page showing individual artists works. If you have images of the exhibit to share please email admin.

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Hey Jason, I am just doing that very thing, I have some plates from Harvey Zucker who made them in the 1970’s (electroplated). At Andy’s suggestion I sanded down the back of the plate, it seems to work fine. Mike mentions using a collodion style plate dipper made of copper – so maybe by just being in contact with the back the plate the reaction will work?

I think in Baron Gros’s manual (see resources page) he mentions using copal varnish on the back of plates to save on silver plating solution.

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Hi Mike, thanks for that, most interesting, I shall try the second galvanising, this makes sense as second goes on previously galvanised plates did seem to work better. I have been using a galvanising recipe that must have one of versions 1 to 3.0 from from Eric Mertens which originally came from you and in it you have the additional ingredients of Sodium Sulfite Sodium Metabisulfite. This seemed similar to a fixing recipe (15 each of grams Sodium Thiosulfate and Sodium Sulfite in 1 liter of distilled water) of Irv’s that I’m told is uses the sodium sulfite as an oxygen scavenger. What rationale led you to drop these from the formula?

Information in discussions like this is such a great thing for the contemporary dag genre, it will enable artists to achieve better images and is one of our goals in establishing cdags.org, many thanks.

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Darlot lenses usually have the name written in pencil on the edge of the glass elements. I imagine finding a good petzval lens for whole plate is a real challenge, the brass lens market on ebay is so cut throat with unstoppable bidders on the really good items. I keep a eye on ebay france (searching for “laiton objectif”), its where I got my third plate camera lens which is daguerreian period for a reasonable price.

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Hey Larry, nice chamfered box camera. Is the lens a Darlot? They hve that black shoulder to the lens hood. Even though the petzval is a formula the Darlots and the later 19th century lantern slide lenses tend to have longer focal lengths, which I think reduces the speed of the lens. I have found that for the same sized petzval lenses you can swap element around, My sixth plate lens use too have a lot of bokeh/swirl to it but I swapped the rear element set for one from a similarly sized Darlot and this muted the effect while still working nicely,

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Hello all, post deleted as requested, a good example of the community governing itself. Ken is endeavouring to put together info on the “Renaissance man” for posting on cdags, I think we all look forward to hearing about him.

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Ken tells me that Tom Young will be going as well, so that 6 Daguerreotypists from outside Europe that will be at Bry this week

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Jonathan, Ken, Jerry and Sean – Takashi Arai will be in Bry too, I hope you all have a great time meeting up

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Thought I would add to the Bromine pics, I bought this 250ml of bromine about a month ago and have used some of it, actually Andy’s find of the small dripper bottle looks a good way to decant some. So far in storage not a wiff of bromine around the cap, early days though.

 

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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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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.

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I sent 6 and made videos of them before sending, sent them fed ex – fly my pretties….

Posted the videos in my journal ; http://www.casedimage.com/about/wordpress/

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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.

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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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I think Mark Osterman has shot with the Wolcott style camera made by Ray Morgeweck which uses a mirror (not sure what type), I’ll ask Mark what the exposures were like.

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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.

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