Glass plates

[removed account4]

I have recently been looking at a series of photographs taken on glass plates which are very impressive. Glass plates have optimum dimensional stability (dead flat) and I wondered how many people on APUG still use these and contact print the results. I take my hat off to such a form of perfect image making.

clive:

i've been coating glass plates on and off since september 1986. mostly done with commercially sold, store bought liquid emulsion.
it isn't hard to coat plates, you can do this for both in camera exposure or printing on. i printed on most of my plates
( some were larger than 11x14 )
denise's book is available on blurb, it is a wonderful resource.
you make salt prints, making a salted emulsion is about as easy as that, it just takes a few ingredients and a little time and you can pour ( or paint, make ) your own plates

Well, good grief. If you can coat emulsion on a glass plate, you can coat it on film. Film isn't going anywhere.

!!

 

[Nodda Duma]

Speaking of which, just coated some 5x7 plates and will have the unfortunate opportunity of determining the effect of uneven coating on developed density (one of my stands used for setting emulsion was unknowingly tilted).

My hypothesis (hope?) is if the emulsion coating is thick enough even on the "thin" side, there won't be a significant impact, since the light during exposure penetrates only so far.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Well, the light actually does penetrate to the back. It is either attenuated or spread depending on quantity and wavelength. If it does not appear to be penetrating, then you are under exposing or under developing (or both).

PE