Making & Printing A Wet Plate Collodion Negative

This is a demonstration of making a wet plate collodion negative. Quinn makes two clear glass negatives of his National Resonator guitar.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• wet
• plate
• collodion
• making
• negative
• POP
• print
• photography
• 19th
• Century

[stevensusername]

Hi I have a question. the 2nd exposure was longer, but gave more detail. If you increase the exposure time, my negatives become brighter / lighter / damage because of over exposure... Is this different with this kind of collodion negatives?

I'm interested in glass plate negatives / photographic printing. I just got ''Silver Gelatin'' - a user's guide to liquid photographic emulsions, but I still have to dive into it.

thanks for the video

[quinnjacobson]

@stevensusername Hello, the more time/light you give an image, the more "dense" or "dark" it will become when you view it with transmitted light. If you were to look at this plate with reflected light, backed with something black, it would look very "bright". Good negatives in Collodion make terrible looking positives and vice versa. I hope that makes sense.

Thanks for the question.

[lloplop]

is it not possible to use a light meter doing this kind of photography? I would imagine there is no way to set the iso as it will be slightly different each time? maybe I am way off. I expose the same way when I was doing some experimental pinhole stuff. I would just expose one and then adjust accordingly. Is there no way to meter doing this kind of photography? thanks!

[quinnjacobson]

Light meters are not really useful with Wet Plate Collodion. The ISO of Collodion is between 1 and 3 - it can go even slower than 1 with age. A light meter might get you in the ball park, but experience is the best "light meter.:

[quinnjacobson]

I apologize for the very late response. Light meters, for the most part, aren't helpful. However, sometimes, you can get a "ballpark exposure" with using ISO 1. If you've been doing Collodion for a while, your instincts will be closer than a meter.

[Noraaaa009]

i don't understand the whole negative/ postive aspect of photography. I understand the difference, but why do you sometimes get a negative first and then a postitive, or the opposite. I know, in Daguerreotype photography, you get a positive, isn't that better then getting a negative in the collodion process? Please help! thanks

[quinnjacobson]

In Collodion, thin negatives, or underexposed negatives can be viewed as positives when placed against something black. These images are usually too thin/underexposed to print on traditional POP. Depending on your preference, both positives and negatives (prints made from negatives) are equal in quality.

[lloplop]

great! thanks a lot for your reply. I am a student trying to get into this. do you have any advice for a beginner? I would like to do it alone, but maybe I can't without traveling to a workshop? whatever it takes!

[Noraaaa009]

thank you!!

[quinnjacobson]

thank you!