Glass plates

810view · Feb 24, 2003

You might read this if you are interested in making emulsions:

http://rmp.opusis.com/documents/photoemuls...toemulsions.htm

~~Eric

SteveGangi · Feb 25, 2003

Cyanotypes might look great. Also, Van Dykes or sepias might be good, to get the "old timey" look.

Aggie · Feb 25, 2003

SteveGangi · Feb 25, 2003

If they are cheap enough, try it. Just don't get pulled into a bidding war. Set YOUR price and stick to it.

edbuffaloe · Mar 5, 2003

Ryuji Suzuki and Terry Holsinger are both working on making their own glass plates. I have seen photographs taken by Terry on glass plates hand coated with a bromide emulsion that he mixed himself. Terry is a member of the Austin Alternative Process Group.

David Hall · Mar 5, 2003

It is always so interesting to me when I see Glass Plates considered an alternative process. Makes me worry that some day someone is going to be considered a master of the alternative process of gelatin silver printing.

dgh

edbuffaloe · Mar 6, 2003

I daresay that gelatin silver will be considered an alternative process in another 30 years. But anyone who is coating their own emulsions today, whether they be Vandyke, salt, platinum, or silver, I think can be legitimately considered to be working in an "alternative" or historical process.

Ryuji · Jan 15, 2005

edbuffaloe said:
Ryuji Suzuki and Terry Holsinger are both working on making their own glass plates. I have seen photographs taken by Terry on glass plates hand coated with a bromide emulsion that he mixed himself. Terry is a member of the Austin Alternative Process Group.

Yes he and I have been doing this project. I've finally made a scan of my chloride paper and bromide paper last week and posted them on a blog. The bromide one is not the best example because of lousy brush marks but you see that "old timey" tonality is revived there.

Plate emulsions are made in similar procedure but with different concentration profiles, temperature, time, etc. The plate emulsions ahve to be much lower in contrast and higher in speed. (I've seen people making dry plates with liquid emulsions but I wonder those people suffer from too much negative contrast and loss of speed if they are developed for normal contrast.)

Ryuji · Jan 15, 2005

David Hall said:
It is always so interesting to me when I see Glass Plates considered an alternative process. Makes me worry that some day someone is going to be considered a master of the alternative process of gelatin silver printing.

dgh

That's the problem with the word "alternative" and not the problem with silver-gelatin process, I think.

kwmullet · Jan 15, 2005

Ryuji said:
Yes he and I have been doing this project. I've finally made a scan of my chloride paper and bromide paper last week and posted them on a blog. The bromide one is not the best example because of lousy brush marks but you see that "old timey" tonality is revived there.[...]

Sounds like something I'd like to see. I looked in the APUG journals, but didn't see you there, so that's probably not the blog you were referring to. I checked for a personal website in your apug profile. nadda. I googled for various combinations of things like "ryuji photo blog" or "ryuji emulsion", but came up with several pages of nadda.

Care to post a pointer to the blog in question?

-KwM-

Ryuji · Jan 16, 2005

kwmullet said:
Sounds like something I'd like to see. I looked in the APUG journals, but didn't see you there, so that's probably not the blog you were referring to. I checked for a personal website in your apug profile. nadda. I googled for various combinations of things like "ryuji photo blog" or "ryuji emulsion", but came up with several pages of nadda.

Care to post a pointer to the blog in question?

-KwM-

Sorry i should've included this last time.
Dead Link Removed

The bromide one has bad brush mark, but please disregard it. I've tried half dozen surfactants and several different proportions of raw gelatin/modified gelatin/hardener and my current version coats nicely.

If anyone wants to try, I strongly suggest to start with a well formulated bromide emulsion. I've had 2500x more frustration with chloride emulsions though the formula and direction are shorter. With chloride (or chlorobromide), deep black fogging is a very common problem with the least possible degree of contamination or bad gelatin. Bromide is more forgiving. If you screw up a batch of bromide emulsion, what often happens is very low contrast and/or very low speed. These are mentally less discouraging and frustrating than seeing nothing but Dmax (with good traces of uneven coating).

Anyway, making practically useful emulsions requires a higher degree of enthusiasm and dedication for silver gelatin process than mixing film developers from scratch, so a small mailing list would be a more effective means of communication. (I used to have one but there were only 2 people who actually made emulsions there.)

kwmullet · Jan 16, 2005

Ryuji said:
Sorry i should've included this last time.
Dead Link Removed

Cool, thanks. I'm my 'googling', I did find your pure-silver.org site, but couldn't find a link from the main page to the blog.

[...]
Anyway, making practically useful emulsions requires a higher degree of enthusiasm and dedication for silver gelatin process than mixing film developers from scratch, so a small mailing list would be a more effective means of communication. (I used to have one but there were only 2 people who actually made emulsions there.)

I suspect there would be considerable more substantial interest and audience in the alt-process topic on apug. It would also be benificial to anyone searching on the topic in the future.

The 'pure-silver' title has me curious. Are you connected with either the old or new pure-silver mailing list?

-KwM-

Ryuji · Jan 16, 2005

kwmullet said:
I suspect there would be considerable more substantial interest and audience in the alt-process topic on apug. It would also be benificial to anyone searching on the topic in the future.

The 'pure-silver' title has me curious. Are you connected with either the old or new pure-silver mailing list?

I am not so sure about the level of interest. The bromide emulsion has Part 1 through Part 6 as far as the solutions are concerned, and each part has up to 6 agents in it. Most steps are a lot more than simply adding the solution and stirring. Many operations are also performed at different temperatures. It's really a lot of work with 2 hours production time per batch. Chloride emulsion takes about 50 minutes to make but it is a lot more trouble to use chloride emulsion in practice. It's a lot more work than cyanotype, Van Dyke, etc. but what's nice about it is that I can use my enlarger without worrying about making enlarged negative, and exposure is done in a matter of seconds.

I'm concerned about this mailing list:
Dead Link Removed

Ryuji · Jan 17, 2005

jdef said:
please forgive my ignorance, but why can you enlarge on your chloride paper, but not on Azo?

That particular chloride paper is 20% bromide (80%chloride) and the speed is enhanced with effective dopant and chemical sensitization. Contact printing emulsions are made with intentionally low speeds so that exposure time is long enough. These are different goals and different types of emulsions can be made for them.

Of course it's possible to make a bromide contact printing emulsion and a chloride enlarging emulsion.

Hope this is helpful.

Ryuji · Jan 17, 2005

jdef said:
Thank you Ryuji. Are there any advantages to making a contact printing emulsion? Does that provision simplify the process at all?

I wish the question was a bit more specific. Contact printing emulsions are generally made in pretty much the same way as enlarging emulsions. It may have somewhat simpler and/or shorter process but the principle is the same.

But a formula with fewer steps is not necessarily easier to master.
The formula and procedure of making my chloride emulsion are about half the length of those of my bromide emulsion, but the bromide emulsion is less prone to troubles.

Ryuji · Jan 17, 2005

I see. Yes contact emulsion is simpler as I said before, but the difference is like making a cup of tea with shorter steeping time with different amount of milk and sugar. You still need to boil water to the correct temperature for the leaf, and must have appropriate teapot and strainer. So the major requirement remains the same.

Contact printing emulsions don't have to be fast, so one requirement is already out of the equation. The issue is to get good contrast and low fog. In my experience, the emulsion part is easy, as long as you have good inert photographic gelatin. The difficult part is to coat it on the paper. Almost all paper stocks I tried fog silver chloride emulsion when they contact. So you have to size the paper with well hardened photographic gelatin and coat the emulsion on top of it (which is generally a good thing for improving image quality as well). Then avoid the edges of the paper and coat in areas like an inch from thee dges.

Alternatively, you can make a very slow bromide emulsion. It requires a bit more steps but the emulsion is a lot more robust against fogging.

You'll need a reacting vessel (glass, glazed earthware or titanium - no other metals, though high corrosion resistant stainless steel is also good) at temperature of 50 degrees centigrade in water jacket. This vessel has to be stirred very rapidly for an hour or so. A good mechanical stirring is a plus, but you can do it with hand for proof of concept. You also need some deionized water, photographic gelatin, silver nitrate, sodium chloride, potassium bromide, potassium iodide, sodium thiosulfate, benzotriazole, and a refrigerator (in darkroom) as a bare minimum requirement.

Anyone still willing to try? You should email me, because the whole process is more than what I'm wiling to punch into this tiny text box.

kwmullet · Jan 17, 2005

Ryuji said:
[...]
Anyone still willing to try? You should email me, because the whole process is more than what I'm wiling to punch into this tiny text box.

Ryuji,

I'm sure I'm not the only one whose eager to find out what's involved, just out of curiosity if not anything else. Why not write an article for APUG?

I'm clueless about the mechanics of submitting an article. I'll paste some links to what might be relevant threads below, but they seem to indicate that there's a "submit article" menu choice, and I can't find it. Sean@apug.org would know for sure, though. Also, numerous folks have already gotten articles submitted -- so I'm assuming they'd know as well.

Article submission threads... possibly...
(there was a url link here which no longer exists)
(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

-KwM-

Ryuji · Jan 17, 2005

jdef said:
I don't have room for a refrigerator in my darkroom, so I'll have to wait until I move into more spacious facilities. I have a mag stirrer, but not a hotplate stirrer, which might be more useful. As long as there are intelligent, creative people working on a problem, I'm optomistic that one day it will be simplified to the point that even I can get decent results. Thank you.

I understand. I started my emulsion project a couple of years ago. The biggest problem was to find a space where I can do this project. Renting 200 sqf with no window but with ventilation, running water and affordable rent for me was close to impossible in Boston. Then I spent nights at library xeroxing relevant papers, and weekends in my darkroom making test batches and printing step wedges. I've paid for the photocopier cards and library fines for the price of a pound of silver nitrate, analytical reagent grade.

My emulsion formulae are simple, especially if you consider the performance. Experts at Fuji or Eastman would laugh, I am very sure, but I don't want compromise in image quality so my formulae evolved to overcome some limitations of my limited setup. The reaction vessels used in those top end plants are equipped with multiple mixers, premixing chamber and premixer, multiple calibrated nozzles, and all sorts of measurement probes in the solution with everything under feedback control and computer profiling. In my setup, I have a hotplate magnetic stirrer with a glazed ceramic jar (with a lighttight lid, very important when I want to make a cup of tea in a very long emulsion making process), and jetting solutions through pipettes or syringes with no measurement and no feedback. The price is that the photographic performance depends on the "art" of mixing, not just dissolving how much of what goes in which solution. It's kinda like making hollandaise sauce from raw ingredients. You need certain skill to do it well.

So, one advice from me for those who found old emulsion books in libraries - using more chemicals is the cheapest part of emulsion making. If more work, more chemicals, more steps can really solve the problem, it is a real bargain. Don't be discouraged by the number of agents and steps required.

Ryuji · Jan 17, 2005

kwmullet said:
I'm sure I'm not the only one whose eager to find out what's involved, just out of curiosity if not anything else. Why not write an article for APUG?

Well, I could publish it on my website as well. I'm thinking about what is the best way to share this info with others, but I am also worried about the "technical support" load. I disclosed several of my developer formulae like DS-1, 2, 8, 10, 12, 14, 15 and maybe a few others. I highly appreciate feedbacks (particularly because people like DS-10, 12 and 14 so much), but I also get questions and requests for suggestions for fixing problems of someone else's formulae that I don't know about... I've made my developers and tested myself for some time before disclosing the formulae, and I know they work out of the box, with no fog, etc, etc. BUT emulsions, I test them all and some of them remain in my formula book, but I still have vivid memory of failure after failure after failure and I can easily imagine many of you repeat some of that experience, though you'll have to know common problem areas to avoid many of them. (And some of the problems I had was not even mentioned in any literature I consulted.)

As a long term project, I'm making a booklet of silver gelatin photography. Part 1 is emulsion, Part 2 is processing chemistry. So people can continue to make silver based b&w photographs without commercial supplies. I think this is a very nice idea. I probably sell 5 copies at APUG and 10 copies in the rest of the world. I am still skeptical how many people are willing to pay to know these, much less willing to try after knowing the investment in time and money.

jantman · Jan 18, 2005

I've looked into making my own glass plates. Making the emulsions is a fine science, and requires a rather large investment in scientific apparatus to properly mix the emulsion (specifically to heat, wash, and strain it).

If you're really interested, email me and I will send you copies of the documents I have.

I found it to be financially impossible for anyone but a retired millionaire.

On the other hand, if you got it working, I'd buy some plates.

Ryuji · Jan 18, 2005

jantman said:
I've looked into making my own glass plates. Making the emulsions is a fine science, and requires a rather large investment in scientific apparatus to properly mix the emulsion (specifically to heat, wash, and strain it).

If you're really interested, email me and I will send you copies of the documents I have.

I found it to be financially impossible for anyone but a retired millionaire.

On the other hand, if you got it working, I'd buy some plates.

My low tech apparatus costed me less than a couple of towing fees and parking ticket in my city. I spent a lot more money and time to figure out what works and what doesn't. If I had someone advising me what to do from the beginning, the course would be a lot easier.

But frankly, I got absolutely the biggest excitement when I saw images developing from my emulsion. It was even bigger excitement than my very first darkroom experience. Actually I got visible image from my very first emulsion. It was just that I didn't want to make any serious image with that crappy image quality.

Most of the decent old formulae require emulsion be chill set to stiff jelley, shread it into noodles and wash the noodle in cold water for several hours with a few changes of water. This is a lot of work and requires a lot of gelatin in the emulsion, leading to thicker coating and less sharp image. Well, this is the simplest way for beginners but those who are chemically concious will find that this process can be sped up with a couple of extra chemicals (or if you could buy a certain kind of modified gelatin). It can be done in mere 20-30 minutes that way, with a lot less water. But of course this would make initial investment greater, though these chemicals are cheap.

I'm a poor unemployed but I can do it. But I don't have time, money or motivation to commercialize it. If you have a nice coating machine and good supplies of glass, you can commercialize my emulsions and pay me the licensing fee in plates. Indeed, I heard you can buy plates from Russia if you just want to use them.

PS. a couple of people wrote me asking for more details. Will follow up soon.

Ole · Feb 15, 2005

Well, I've just received 3 packs of Russian plates - Slavich PFN-01T. From what I can read from the pack they are Isooptochromatic, with a speed of 160 GOST.

No, I'm not going to shoot test targets with them! I'll load two in holders for my old Voigtländer Bergheil 9x12cm, and another two in Linhof Universal 9x12 plate/film holders. Then I'll go out and take some pictures. Depending on results I'll then decide how best to use the rest, and whether to buy more.

Ole · Feb 16, 2005

Forgot to mention - Retrophotographic still have a few packs of plates available if anyone else wants to try!

Donald Qualls · Feb 17, 2005

Ole said:
Forgot to mention - Retrophotographic still have a few packs of plates available if anyone else wants to try!

Want to? You bet; my 1927 Ideal probably hasn't had a glass plate in it in at least fifty years.

Able? Not likely -- aren't those something like $8 US per plate, plus shipping from UK to US? And then I'd have to find a way to develop glass plates without a real darkroom (hint -- I'm not developing in trays in my changing bag).

Glass plates

810view

SteveGangi

Aggie

SteveGangi

edbuffaloe

David Hall

edbuffaloe

Ryuji

Ryuji

kwmullet

Ryuji

kwmullet

Ryuji

Ryuji

Ryuji

Ryuji

kwmullet

Ryuji

Ryuji

jantman

Ryuji

Ole

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