Daguerreotype like portraits

[ericdan]

I went to my local photography museum this past Sunday and they had an exhibition on the history of photography. Really amazingly well preserved daguerreotype portraits from the mid 1800s. I was stunned by how sharp and grainless they are. Most of them were rather small in size but looked amazing.
What would be the best way to get similar results with modern film?
120 tmax 100 in xtol then contact print?

 

[albada]

Sharp and grainless suggests contact-printing a 4x5 or 8x10 negative onto FB paper. I have such a 4x5 print that is stunning. It puts my 35mm work to shame.
Mark Overton

 

[koraks]

120 tmax 100 in xtol then contact print?

That would work. Although any sheet film contact printed will be virtually grainless, even if you use fomapan400 and develop it in rodinal.
Another matter is tonal rendition; you could use a blue filter to approach the tonality of those uv sensitive processes of the 19th century.

One thing you obviously cannot (or not without serious difficulty) emulate is the nature of the physical image itself. No matter how nice a contact print on paper is, it will always be fundamentally different from a daguerrotype.

 

[Donald Qualls]

If your pockets are deep, you could just make actual Daguerreotypes.

I ran across a YouTube video recently about making Dags in 35mm cameras. Silver plated or clad copper plates, polished well (mainly to ensure a clean, oxide-free silver surface), fumed with straight iodine in their demo (though historically bromine and iodine were used sequentially, sometimes even chlorine), and developed by Becquerel process (overall exposure to red light) -- they used bright light, so got an image ready to fix and gild in a matter of hours, rather than a week.

Then fix and gild -- puddling gold chloride solution on the plate surface -- dry, and lacquer.

It looked accessible enough that I searched the cost of the plates -- nope, I won't be doing that.

 

[Kino]

This may be the article Donald is referencing: http://www.alternativephotography.com/becquerel-daguerreotype/

 

[Donald Qualls]

Actually, I was referencing a video, IIRC it was on the Smithsonian magazine channel.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

I've done both Becquerel and mercury-developed daguerreotypes in a seminar. While Becquerel works, the plates don't have the same contrast or sharpness of mercury-developed plates. If you're looking for the Daguerreotype look from the 1840s-1850s, then you're not going to be satisfied with other than mercury-developed plates. It's expensive as hell (a 4x5" plate is going to run you something like $50-75 per plate, and the hardware to sensitize and develop the plates is going to run you in the $1500-2000 range, not to mention adequate safety gear... if you want to process mercury-developed plates indoors, you really really really need to get a lab-grade fume hood). This is why there are perhaps 20-30 active Daguerreotype practitioners around the world today.

 

[removed account4]

Jason's been making them for years, maybe even decades. ... http://motamedi.info
==
use a blue filter or some say an orange filter to make your panchromatic film look blue. blind.
shoot long exposures, daguerreotypes were long exposures so you want your subjects / negatives to "breathe"
and ...

Sharp and grainless suggests contact-printing a 4x5 or 8x10 negative onto FB paper. I have such a 4x5 print that is stunning. It puts my 35mm work to shame.
Mark Overton

what mark said..