RE: Sources for wet plate collodion chemicals

Diane,

With respect to the difference in quality of the images you have seen most
likely has more to do with the quality control of the individual
photographers then advances in the technique.

-----Original Message-----
From: Best, Dianne [mailto:dbest@hydro.mb.ca]
Sent: Monday, August 29, 2005 7:23 AM
To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
Subject: RE: Sources for wet plate collodion chemicals

Etienne wrote:

>> It occurs to me that a further point might be worth making on this
thread. The "new tintype" kits that use liquid silver-gelatin emulsion
do not produce the finely-divided, whitish-looking silver deposits that
the wet collodion processes produce. Accordingly, the best that can be
hoped for is a rather dull simulation of a real tintype. Unfortunately,
there is no good way to persuade these S-G emulsions to produce good,
whitish silver deposits.

>> Note that old tintypes are themselves often dull because the
original, whitish deposit of finely-divided silver has oxidized over the
years and does not appear nearly as white as it did originally. If one
wants to see the real potential of collodion, I suggest trying to find
ambrotypes mounted on black velvet produced by a current wet-plate
expert, or very well-preserved originals of the same type. It is a
stunningly beautiful process. Haunting, actually, at least to me.

Now this brings up a REALLY interesting point.

Since I started playing with Rockland's "tintype" products a year ago, I
have looked at A LOT of tintypes (many hundreds), some images available
online and many that people have brought to show me (once they found out
I was "in to" tintypes).

The Rockland process (WHEN it works, which is only about 1/2 the time)
produces "coffee and cream" whites and blacks that are dark but not
truly black - very much consistent with the tintypes I have seen that
are pre-1870.

However, since people have been bringing their family tintypes for me to
examine I have seen a different "class" of tintypes where the whites are
bright and almost pure white and the blacks are almost pitch black. On
these, the detail and sharpness are VERY good. They are home-grown
"tintypes", often on rough metal plates (some, I swear, must have been
cut with an ax!), and the thickness of the emulsion and the way it is
spread on the plate would lead me to suspect that they are some form of
collodion but not wet plate images and they are definitely NOT factory
made plates. The "bright" plates I have seen were made by photographers
in southern Ontario, Chicago, Minneapolis, and other unknown points in
the north central U.S.

The only images I have seen that were as bright and high contrast are
some I have recently made on white plates using Ag Plus and contact
printing.

I'd sure like to know what changed in the 1880's to start producing some
of these brighter images.
Received on Tue Aug 30 07:46:19 2005