Anyone ever make Lippmann plates?

holmburgers · Jan 18, 2011

Pictures

Here are some photographs of Lippmann stuff for your viewing pleasure.

1) Cemetary, Gabriel Lippmann, circa 1910
2) Young man, Gabriel Lippmann, circa 1910
3) Interferential Lippmann plate reproducing a color circle, Anonymous, circa 1893
4) Gabriel Lippmann himself, in the laboratory, circa 1900
5) Labeled Vignette du Maréchal Soult sur une boite d'allumettes, probably by Louis Lumiere, circa 1893

Ray Rogers · Jan 19, 2011

Are those from the autochrome book? I recall 2-4 but not #s 1 & 5.

BTW What are you up to these days?

BTW2 Did we ever hear back from SF about the artistic photo he promised?

holmburgers · Jan 19, 2011

Hey Ray,

Yep they are from that book. I hope I don't end up in jail....

I'm up to about the same... nothing! No but really, moving forward on dichromated gelatin dye-transfer matrices (albeit slowly), still thinking about autochromes and Lippmann, but mainly just working to scan all my old film, print in the darkroom and then everything else, a.k.a. life.

SF has yet to do said screen-plate photo, but I'd bet someday we'll see it. Maybe he's waiting for someone else to step up to the plate. If I could just have a week off someday, I'd get so much done, but alas, that's not gonna happen.

By the way, have you made any panchromatic emulsions lately? If you want me to send you a screen-plate, let me know.

Lionel1972 · Jan 19, 2011

Hi guys! Happy New Year to all! Sorry I've much catch up to do on this thread and so little time. I'm still around though. Ray, let me know what I should try to translate next.
Thanks for the pictures Chris! I so wish I could see a Lippmann plate with my own eyes. Maybe if I can go back to Bièvres this next spring and if the museum there has not been abandonned and if they still have one...

holmburgers · Jan 19, 2011

Happy New Year to you too!

Ahhh, indeed, you are in the epicenter of early colour photography; Luis Ducos du Hauron, Gabriel Lippmann, the Lumiere brothers...

I'm jealous!

You know, someone proposed the idea of interference colour photography early on; Bequerel maybe?? (IDK off the top of my head) Anyways, it'd be neat to read the original disclosure.

Hologram · Jan 20, 2011

Lionel1972 said:
I so wish I could see a Lippmann plate with my own eyes. Maybe if I can go back to Bièvres this next spring and if the museum there has not been abandonned and if they still have one...

William Alschuler, On the physical and visual state of 100-year-old Lippmann color photographs (Sixth International Symposium on Display Holography, SPIE 3358) lists several places in France that have (or perhaps, used to have) collections of Lippmann photographs:
- Le Palais de la découverte (15 images)
- Société Française de Photographie, Paris (17 images)
- Musée français de la photographie, Bièvres (10 images)

If you're based not too far from Lausanne, Switzerland, you might go the Musée de l'Elysée. They have 125 images by Lippmann...

holmburgers · Jan 26, 2011

The other night, after having modified my plate holder to fit the odd sized holography plates, I finally loaded a plate. It worked great! So an exposure is the next thing to do and then processing.

I'll try to provide pictures of the holder soon, and of course the plate once it is processed. I found the emulsion side by breathing on either side, as suggested by R Shaffer. The glass side will fog up while the emulsion side will not. I did all this under OC-safelight illumination, which shouldn't be a problem, considering the incredibly low sensitivity of the plates.

Photo Engineer · Jan 26, 2011

We got to see a handful of Lippmann plates at GEH last week. They were gorgeous! One of them was by Lippmann himself.

Mark Osterman then showed us the layout of a Lippmann plate holder with the Mercury inlet and drain. The drawings are quite interesting showing how Lippmann did his work.

PE

holmburgers · Jan 26, 2011

That is way cool! So indeed, the old ones don't need mercury to be viewed??

I've attached a picture from 'Handbook of Photography in Colours'; did it resemble this at all?

I have to admit that I pondered breaking open thermometers and making a mercury holder, BUT then "sense" kicked in, and the mercuric chloride thread, and that seemed to cure that itch. I think it would be a terrible idea...

Something else that confuses me, if mercury is a powerful sensitizing agent, as in astro-photography hyper-sensitization, and also a powerful fogging agent, how come it doesn't adversely affect the Lippmann emulsion?

Sorry, lots of questions, but you've got me excited!

holmburgers · Jan 26, 2011

Here it is

Woops, didn't upload the picture.

Photo Engineer · Jan 26, 2011

It did not seem to look like that at all. We had drawings (side view) of a plate holder with a chamber behind the holder for the Hg. Mercury was not needed for viewing. They were mounted in small velvet cases with doors that opened to expose the plate.

PE

Hologram · Jan 27, 2011

holmburgers said:
Something else that confuses me, if mercury is a powerful sensitizing agent, as in astro-photography hyper-sensitization, and also a powerful fogging agent, how come it doesn't adversely affect the Lippmann emulsion?

If you read Neuhauss' journals, http://holoforum.org/data/lippmann/Neuhauss_Journals.pdf (written in German though), you'll see he encountered tons of problems with mercury. Fogging seems to have been a huge issue. He explicitly mentions "Quecksilberschlieren".

Lionel1972 · Jan 27, 2011

WOW! Good luck Chris with your first Lippmann plate. Can't wait to see the results.
PE, you're so lucky! Can you tell us more about the experience of looking at a Lippmann plate? How different is it from looking at a chrome on a light table?

Lionel1972 · Jan 27, 2011

Just found out that I missed a good opportunity to see actual Lippman plates in Paris in november 2009, but at that time I didn't even know about them. Someone blogged about it and even took a pretty decent picture of a Lippmann plate :

http://www.viedegeek.fr/article/expo-un-monde-en-couleurs-de-gabriel-lippmann-a-la-nanophotonique/

The picture :

Photo Engineer · Jan 27, 2011

Lionel;

You view the plate by incident light at an angle and you view the reflected image as shnown in your photo above. The color is intense and real, being the actual colors recorded instead of a dye image. The images can only be viewed by one or two people at a time due to the limited viewing angle.

PE

Lionel1972 · Jan 27, 2011

Thank you PE. What about the contrast and apparent lattitude of exposure? In the image I posted, the contrast doesn't come up really well but I guess that is due to the digicam settings used. How would you compare it to a large size autochrome (viewing angle aside of course)? Do you think it would be possible to use a loupe on Lippman plates given the small viewing angle?

holmburgers · Jan 27, 2011

Hologram, thanks for mentiong the 'quecksilberschlieren', I guess my suspicion was correct.

Lionel, thanks for the encouragement and the picture. We're getting a pretty good collection of Lippmann images on this thread.

Quick question; any recommendations (I'm looking at you Hologram ) on substituting Sorbitol for Glycerin?

[update, two hours later... whoa, I get it! "quecksilber" is quicksilver, and schlieren is streak, as in Schlieren photography which captures fluid movements of air by small variations in density, streaks if you will. I love cognates and borrowed words...]

Photo Engineer · Jan 27, 2011

Lionel;

The color saturation in the plates we viewed was great but the viewing angle gave us a limited latitude in the image tone itself. Can you visualize that? Good color, good saturation, limited tone. It was nothing like the photo above. They were far superior.

PE

Hologram · Jan 28, 2011

holmburgers said:
Quick question; any recommendations (I'm looking at you Hologram ) on substituting Sorbitol for Glycerin?

[update, two hours later... whoa, I get it! "quecksilber" is quicksilver, and schlieren is streak, as in Schlieren photography which captures fluid movements of air by small variations in density, streaks if you will. I love cognates and borrowed words...]

Post-swelling the emulsion with sorbitol is probably a better solution than doing it with glycerin. But both may leave the surface somewhat tacky. Citric acid might be even more convenient.

Yes, "streak" may be a pretty good translation for Schlieren.

holmburgers · Jan 28, 2011

Thanks,

I think my Sorbitol solution is 70% (I'll have to check). How should I compensate for the difference? Is there a standard conversion, something to go off of?

Photo Engineer · Jan 28, 2011

Hologram said:
Post-swelling the emulsion with sorbitol is probably a better solution than doing it with glycerin. But both may leave the surface somewhat tacky. Citric acid might be even more convenient.

Yes, "streak" may be a pretty good translation for Schlieren.

I have been thinking about the use of Citric Acid. This treatment might be harmful. IDK, but emulsions for the most part are at a neutral pH, say around 5.5 - 6.5. Citric Acid could begin to degrade the gelatin. Urea might be better for swelling the gelatin, if that is what you want. For an adhesive, Sorbitol, Glycerin, and other similar chemicals would probably be preferred.

The Schlieren observed is not Nebel, but streaks could be caused by fog and thus be stated that way in the original text as a description of fog (Nebel).

PE

Hologram · Jan 29, 2011

holmburgers said:
Thanks,

I think my Sorbitol solution is 70% (I'll have to check). How should I compensate for the difference? Is there a standard conversion, something to go off of?

I'It depends on how much wavelength shift you get. I'd start with 5-10% solutions.

Hologram · Jan 29, 2011

Photo Engineer said:
I have been thinking about the use of Citric Acid. This treatment might be harmful. IDK, but emulsions for the most part are at a neutral pH, say around 5.5 - 6.5. Citric Acid could begin to degrade the gelatin. Urea might be better for swelling the gelatin, if that is what you want. For an adhesive, Sorbitol, Glycerin, and other similar chemicals would probably be preferred.

I agree that citric acid may attack a not well hardened gelatin layer. But in my experience (limited to holographic/Lippmann emulsions only) urea is far more aggressive than citric acid.

Generally speaking, I guess better than doing post-swelling would be to have a more "conservative" approach:
- pre-harden the layer prior to processing;
- use a well-balanced colloidal developer (excess of thiocyanate results in loss of silver halide, producing a wavelength shift);
- dry the layer in ethanol or isopropanol.

Photo Engineer said:
The Schlieren observed is not Nebel, but streaks could be caused by fog and thus be stated that way in the original text as a description of fog (Nebel).

Right. Moreover, again according to Neuhauss, removing all the mercury from the emulsion after exposure seems to have been a messy business.

holmburgers · Apr 6, 2011

Man... I look back at my posts from nearly a year ago saying, "I'm gonna do it soon!" HAH! What a schmuck I was...

But such is life.

In (there was a url link here which no longer exists) by Mssr. Shaffer, he used a glyoxal pre-hardener and his results suggest that it was necessary.

I've got chrome alum, so I'm thinking to try a 3% solution for 4 min. Then proceed to develop with a 2-part GP-2 developer, followed by a wash. I've also got some sorbitol incase it needs to be post-swelled.

Anyways, first time using a hardener so just want to make sure that sounds like a good % and time.

Cheers y'all

edit: Oh, and is a wash after the hardener necessary or would it be detrimental?

Photo Engineer · Apr 6, 2011

Use 10% chrome alum for 5 mins with a 5 min wash.

PE

Anyone ever make Lippmann plates?

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