Ciao - Hello!

Ciao - Hello!
I'm Fabio and I'm a screenprinter. In the past I used to play with cyanotype and now I'd like to start wetplate, and take portrait.

I'm pratically totally new to photography, my approach is a printer approach

Have a nice evening,
Fabio

Fabio,
Ciao. I wish it were that simple. I've been in photography for a very long time. I don't do wet plate photography, nor any sort of plate photography. However, from what I know about plate photography, I would suggest that you find someone that is accomplished in this and ask if you can take lessons from them. It's not the simplest thing in the world, and you could spend a lot of money and time trying to figure it out yourself without ever getting anywhere. Like the age old apprenticeship programs that all sorts of artists are familiar with (I had to do this for intaglio etching and fresco painting), it would be invaluable (and save you a lot of that money and time) if you got someone that was good at this to teach you the process. Some of the chemicals are acidic, hazardous to breathe (as in cyanide gas), and/or potentially explosive. It's nothing like conventional film photography.

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Welcome Home Fabio !

~ Ron
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Good day Fabio. Welcome to the APUG community.

Welcome to APUG !

Welcome to APUG Fabio!

Welcome to APUG

Welcome to APUG, Fabio, and have fun with wet plate.

I am thinking loud , I wanted to start every process in photography and in some way , it came to me expensive or poisionous.

If you want to take ultra large photographs , I found best way is to use 20x22 or larger photographic papers in your camera. First you take the negative and than you contact print on same paper to see the positive.

Yes ultra large format cameras can be expensive or heavy and finding to them a lens is another expense.

You can use a single lens bought from scientific suppliers , 1000 mm costs less than 15 dollars.

And you can make a plastic foam foldable camera box in another foldable box and paint them black and make them light tight and carry them to your destination , building a dark cloth film changer might be easy and you can slide the boxes in one other for focus , you can build a giant glass plate view finder out of plexiglass and go from there.

You dont need a enlarger but 10 watt light bulb at the top of the darkroom and on off and go from there.

Good luck and very welcome to APUG.

Umut
Istanbul