Low Cost Daguerreotypes [Guide]

ThePhotoChemist · Nov 18, 2017

Hi everyone. I'm hoping a few of you will find this interesting. I wrote an instructional article at cdags.org about producing lower cost daguerreotypes. It focuses around two primary changes:

Using the silver lining from common mirrors instead of the traditional copper plates, and
using common povidone-iodine tincture to sensitize, rather than elemental iodine.

The guide uses the 'Becquerel' method of development (using the action of red rays) as well, so there is also no mercury involved!

You can find the guide here. Enjoy!

NedL · Nov 18, 2017

This is REALLY cool, thank you very much. ( A strange coincidence, just this morning I was wondering if I could replace elemental iodine with tincture of iodine for another photographic purpose: as an indicator in calotype iodizer )

I have a thought about the fogging during Becquerel development. I've noticed that rubylith is not as opaque to UV as we might hope. For salt prints with a quick exposure it's fine, but longer exposures to the sun or even UVB bulbs will let through actinic light. It's possible that some of the fog you've observed is caused by light, and I wonder if a different source of light or different filtering might help....for example, perhaps you could build a box with a #25 red filter between the plate and the sun... just a thought.

I'm going to read this very carefully and maybe have a go at it eventually!

AgX · Nov 18, 2017

Thank you!

But what puzzles me is your paintstripper. With its name in mind I had expected something based on terpenes, but those would not dissolve a classic copper layer. The organic ingredients in your stripper do not make wiser too. Most likely your mirrors got a paintlayer with just copper pigments. However nowadays mirrors are also made copper-less, but then the varnishes may even be of epoxy type and thus resistant to stripping.

ThePhotoChemist · Nov 18, 2017

Thanks everyone!

NedL - I think most of the fog comes from there being just not enough metallic silver left to reflect the light fully, with such a thin layer and all. You can go straight from sensitizing to fixing and that fog will be there. I do think there's some validity to your observation about rubylith -- I once accidentally set my timer wrong and developed a plate for a full 24 hours. Totally fogged! I know heat is also a becquerel daguerreotypist's enemy, but IIRC the plate was fairly cool. I think it's definitely worth exploring different colors and filters and observing the effects. Lately I've been playing with a yellow filter (3 layers of Rosco #15 Deep Straw) which has a much faster developing action - 15 - 30 minutes!

AgX - To be honest, I haven't really investigated much into the paint stripper. I don't think it's turpentine based, as Citri-strip is promoted as safe for indoor use. I'll try to look into it.

I managed to dig up an old snapshot of a mirror before much of the copper had been removed. I won't pretend that I know all that much about how mirrors are manufactured by any means, but this does look like a legitimate layer of copper.

AgX · Nov 18, 2017

I agree on that copper layer.

iandvaag · Nov 18, 2017

Very cool, thanks so much for sharing.

J 3 · Nov 19, 2017

This is a very cool article / idea and I can't wait to try it (always had a thing for Daguerreotypes). Have you ever thought of making your own silver mirrors rather than stripping off the backing paint and worrying about aluminum mirrors or copper backing layers. A company called Angel Guilding (no affiliation. Probably others as well) sells the supplies to make Ag chemical deposition mirrors (used for sign making on glass). You can double coat (sometimes triple). More importantly they have a ton of videos on YouTube about making mirrors, removing backing paint, etc. There are other homebrew processes involving silver-nitrate or fired silver paste to make a mirror but I don't think the quality would be there. Likewise silver electroplating often involves silver cyanide which is dangerous. There is however true silver-leaf that's dozens of times thicker than a deposition mirror so water guilding silver onto glass might solve the shadow problem (don't know if the gelatin seize would interfere though). Anyhow, great work on making dags more practical.

ThePhotoChemist · Nov 20, 2017

J 3 said:
This is a very cool article / idea and I can't wait to try it (always had a thing for Daguerreotypes). Have you ever thought of making your own silver mirrors rather than stripping off the backing paint and worrying about aluminum mirrors or copper backing layers. A company called Angel Guilding (no affiliation. Probably others as well) sells the supplies to make Ag chemical deposition mirrors (used for sign making on glass). You can double coat (sometimes triple). More importantly they have a ton of videos on YouTube about making mirrors, removing backing paint, etc. There are other homebrew processes involving silver-nitrate or fired silver paste to make a mirror but I don't think the quality would be there. Likewise silver electroplating often involves silver cyanide which is dangerous. There is however true silver-leaf that's dozens of times thicker than a deposition mirror so water guilding silver onto glass might solve the shadow problem (don't know if the gelatin seize would interfere though). Anyhow, great work on making dags more practical.

I think I touched on this briefly in the writeup. But yes, my very first daguerreotypes were made using the Angel Guilding kit! It can definitely be done, but I had a few troubles with it. Firstly, the silver had very poor adhesion to the glass, particularly during fixing. The fixing solution had to be even weaker than it is now, and I could barely agitate the tray at all for fear that it would strip off large chunks of the image. I also had great difficulties getting a good surface mirror - often it would be chemically fogged, requiring gentle wiping before washing or the fog would be permanent. Due to the poor adhesion of the silver, the plates couldn't be polished in the traditional way either. I'm attaching some of my kit-silvered plates.

If you're interested in reading more about it, you can check out this paper here. I definitely picked up a few tips from that document.

I do plan on trying out the more traditional Tollens reagent method at some point, and not just for daguerreotypes either -- there is a method of creating flexible silver mirrors to replace mercury in the Lippmann process as well. May as well kill two birds with one stone!

Silver leaf would be really interesting to try as well! There was an old post on cdags.org where a user used silver leaf, though they never posted any pictures of the results. I remember that post well, because it's where I stole the idea of using iodine tincture! I might order some leaf for a bit of fun, just to see what happens.

J 3 · Nov 20, 2017

Thank you! Strangely Lippman plates are another interest. Sorry I missed the reference. I had to skim the article til I can devote more time to til this holiday. With Lippman plates I thought of silver but then I worried. Wouldn't the silver in the mirror catalyze the silver salts?thinking about it now maybe it'd only be a thin layer but since its in a null of the interferometry and the image is normally clear in those regions it might still mess up the interference. Maybe a silverless clear coat would protect but its have to be very thin. Anyhow I also wanted to bleach some Slovich PFG-03c plates to see if Lippman could be made brighter like they do with standard holograms. I've not done anything yet though.

I don't own Ultra-Realistic Imaging yet where Hans has a chapter on Lippman. Google Books let me read far enough in that appearently Lippman's have also been made with dicromated gelatin as well? My only guess is 3 b&w color separations and 3 exposures with the gelatin at different humidity like how they do one laser color holograms.

Anyhow thanks so much / I'll check out the article. I was thinking platinum/paladium leaf when I'd convinced myself silver wouldn't work but now I'm not sure it wont. The other idea I thought is maybe aluminized Mylar might work but I'm not sure of a clean reflection. Whatever I try I'd like to start with a Slavich plate film rather than having to debug a homebrew emulsion at the same time.

Thanks much!

nmp · Nov 20, 2017

Speaking of silver leaf, I had a thought....can you stick one on paper and do a contact dag?

J 3 · Nov 20, 2017

You'd have to sensitize the leaf before you got it on and get it off cleanly afterwords the later being tricky. Leaf sticks and breaks til its bonded to something. Thicker silver foil or plate might help.

J 3 · Nov 20, 2017

I assumed you meant put silver leaf on a paper positive and contact print that. Then remove and develop the silver. In that case you'd also have to deal with long exposures to get enough uv through the paper. If you meant the other way (bonding leaf to paper to be your final support), leaf on paper has to be burnished and backed with a binder (e.g. Instacol). The longer the leaf is out the more you have to deal with oxidation too. There is silver with 5% germanium I think that's very tarnish resistant and I've always wondered if it would interfere with photo chemistry.

nmp · Nov 20, 2017

J 3 said:
I assumed you meant put silver leaf on a paper positive and contact print that. Then remove and develop the silver. In that case you'd also have to deal with long exposures to get enough uv through the paper. If you meant the other way (bonding leaf to paper to be your final support), leaf on paper has to be burnished and backed with a binder (e.g. Instacol). The longer the leaf is out the more you have to deal with oxidation too. There is silver with 5% germanium I think that's very tarnish resistant and I've always wondered if it would interfere with photo chemistry.

I guess I didn't think it through after my initial "idea."

A novice question: Can you sensitize by dipping the plate in instead of holding it over Tincture of Iodine?

ThePhotoChemist · Nov 21, 2017

nmp said:
I guess I didn't think it through after my initial "idea."

A novice question: Can you sensitize by dipping the plate in instead of holding it over Tincture of Iodine?

Definitely an interesting thought. In the past I had accidentally dropped scrap pieces into the iodine and noticed a color change to yellow, but I never pursued it because I didn't want to deal with the relative mess of cleaning the plate off in the dark.

I tried it just now - checking the color at 5, 15 and 1 hour intervals. Each time I had to go wash it in the sink for a minute to remove all the iodine goo. Each color check showed it to be straw yellow.

After letting it dry (even though the color didn't change, I recognized that the reflection in the red light looked about hazy enough), the color seemed to be green, with small splotches of magenta scattered around.

I gave it a standard photogram with one of my tried-and-true butterflies. I do see the faintest outline of the butterfly showing up, but not nearly as strong as it should be at this point in development. Considering it took 1h20m of sensitizing to get this far, I think you'd be better off just letting it fume. It'd save you a ton of hassle and mess too. I'll fix it tomorrow just in case something crazy happens, but this seems like it might be a bit of a dead end. On the other hand, this was using the povidone iodine tincture. Lugol's tincture might work differently... I don't have any on hand, and it's a bit difficult to get larger quantities of the stuff.

BJ68 · Nov 21, 2017

Thank you...for the article....I know now my error...because I used UV with 365 nm for 11 minutes, which was anyway to long...but to know that I need no UV is better...
And that I can avoid the mercury.....
Here was my first trial with mercury (in German): http://illumina-chemie.de/daguerreotypie-a-trial-t4101.html

Bj68

nmp · Nov 21, 2017

ThePhotoChemist said:
Definitely an interesting thought. In the past I had accidentally dropped scrap pieces into the iodine and noticed a color change to yellow, but I never pursued it because I didn't want to deal with the relative mess of cleaning the plate off in the dark.

I tried it just now - checking the color at 5, 15 and 1 hour intervals. Each time I had to go wash it in the sink for a minute to remove all the iodine goo. Each color check showed it to be straw yellow.

After letting it dry (even though the color didn't change, I recognized that the reflection in the red light looked about hazy enough), the color seemed to be green, with small splotches of magenta scattered around.

I gave it a standard photogram with one of my tried-and-true butterflies. I do see the faintest outline of the butterfly showing up, but not nearly as strong as it should be at this point in development. Considering it took 1h20m of sensitizing to get this far, I think you'd be better off just letting it fume. It'd save you a ton of hassle and mess too. I'll fix it tomorrow just in case something crazy happens, but this seems like it might be a bit of a dead end. On the other hand, this was using the povidone iodine tincture. Lugol's tincture might work differently... I don't have any on hand, and it's a bit difficult to get larger quantities of the stuff.

Thanks...that was a quick turnaround!

It does look messy that way and you don't have the benefit of checking the color to monitor the progress of sensitization, a critical aspect of making a daguerreotype. It intrigues me though that the senstization rates in direct contact with the dissolved iodine would be slower than the I2 vapors coming off. May be the potassium iodide in the tincture acts as an inhibitor. Another surprising thing for me is the fact that substantial amount of the I2 coming off. Does it require any special precaution other than normal ventilation the darkroom?

:Niranjan

ThePhotoChemist · Nov 21, 2017

nmp said:
Thanks...that was a quick turnaround!

It does look messy that way and you don't have the benefit of checking the color to monitor the progress of sensitization, a critical aspect of making a daguerreotype. It intrigues me though that the senstization rates in direct contact with the dissolved iodine would be slower than the I2 vapors coming off. May be the potassium iodide in the tincture acts as an inhibitor. Another surprising thing for me is the fact that substantial amount of the I2 coming off. Does it require any special precaution other than normal ventilation the darkroom?

:Niranjan

I was using the povidone-iodine stuff, not the Lugol's iodine tincture, so no potassium iodide. Your point still stands, though -- there could be something about the aqueous nature of the environment that inhibits AgI to grow in a desirable way.

As far as ventilation -- take my advice with a grain of salt and treat the iodine with respect. That being said, iodine tincture is hundreds of times slower than elemental iodine (elemental iodine can sensitize a plate a 3-6 inches away in about 45 seconds, iodine tincture will sensitize a plate 1/8" away in about an hour and a half). I've never so much as caught a whiff of the stuff working with it normally. A few times I did neglect to cover the tops of the trays (I use glass) over a weekend, and it did iodize the immediate area (a few inches). I think if you're sensible with it you'll be totally fine.

nmp · Nov 22, 2017

ThePhotoChemist said:
I was using the povidone-iodine stuff, not the Lugol's iodine tincture, so no potassium iodide. Your point still stands, though -- there could be something about the aqueous nature of the environment that inhibits AgI to grow in a desirable way.

As far as ventilation -- take my advice with a grain of salt and treat the iodine with respect. That being said, iodine tincture is hundreds of times slower than elemental iodine (elemental iodine can sensitize a plate a 3-6 inches away in about 45 seconds, iodine tincture will sensitize a plate 1/8" away in about an hour and a half). I've never so much as caught a whiff of the stuff working with it normally. A few times I did neglect to cover the tops of the trays (I use glass) over a weekend, and it did iodize the immediate area (a few inches). I think if you're sensible with it you'll be totally fine.

OK, this made me look up different iodines. May be you already know all of this...

Apparently, according to wiki, "tincture of iodine" is a specific formulation - different from povidone-iodine and Lugol's iodine. Probably the term has become generic enough that it is used to describe all of them. Ticture of iodine and Lugol's are closer in chemistry - both have KI and I2 forming soluble triiodide ions. The former contains alcohol which allows some elemental iodine to dissolve requiring lower concentration of KI. The latter is all water based with higher KI concentration.

The povidone-iodine is quite different. First it contains HI and not KI. Second, it contains the polymer called polyvinylpyrrolidone which acts as template to complex with HI3 ion. The water soluble polymer is probably the one that creates the mess for cleaning up the plate after the dunking.

:Niranjan.

Dibbd · Nov 23, 2017

If one uses a digital positive, is it possible to expose long enough to get a printed out daguerreotype and omit the red light development? It strikes me that the becquerel process is more akin to a printing out process than a development process.

nmp · Nov 24, 2017

Dibbd said:
If one uses a digital positive, is it possible to expose long enough to get a printed out daguerreotype and omit the red light development? It strikes me that the becquerel process is more akin to a printing out process than a development process.

If I understand correctly, you still need a negative to do contact printing. It is not a POP process in the sense that you can just increase the exposure and wait for the Dmax to develop. The red light Becquerel process works on the principle that there is a shift in the sensitivity of the halide from primarily the blue and UV regions to the red region in presence of metallic silver in the areas where latent image is formed. In that sense, it is a development of sorts where the original exposure is amplified. It won't happen if you just leave the plate exposed to UV-Vis light indefinitely. Conversely, if you take an un-exposed plate (without a latent image) and expose it to red light, nothing would happen.

Nodda Duma · Nov 24, 2017

One of the fascinating aspects of being familiar with different industries or hobbies is that you get to see the cross-pollination of techniques. For example, silvering glass is very familiar to the amateur telescope making community.

ThePhotoChemist · Nov 25, 2017

nmp said:
OK, this made me look up different iodines. May be you already know all of this...

Apparently, according to wiki, "tincture of iodine" is a specific formulation - different from povidone-iodine and Lugol's iodine. Probably the term has become generic enough that it is used to describe all of them. Ticture of iodine and Lugol's are closer in chemistry - both have KI and I2 forming soluble triiodide ions. The former contains alcohol which allows some elemental iodine to dissolve requiring lower concentration of KI. The latter is all water based with higher KI concentration.

The povidone-iodine is quite different. First it contains HI and not KI. Second, it contains the polymer called polyvinylpyrrolidone which acts as template to complex with HI3 ion. The water soluble polymer is probably the one that creates the mess for cleaning up the plate after the dunking.

:Niranjan.

I was aware of the basic differences, but you got me going through wikipedia again anyway... Back in the day I meant to work with Lugol's iodine, but mistakenly ordered a bunch of povidone-iodine instead and just kind of stuck with it. I've tried Lugol's once or twice since, but the sensitization times seemed to be about the same. It'd be worth exploring more, as I wasn't very methodical about it. Anyway, I ran across this:

"PVP-I can be loaded into hydrogels, which can be based on carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC), poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA), and gelatin, or on crosslinked polyacrylamide. These hydrogels can be used for wound dressing. The rate of release of the iodine in the PVP-I is heavily dependent on the hydrogel composition: it increases with more CMC/PVA and decreases with more gelatin." (emphasis mine)

It might be possible to tweak the povidone-iodine composition a bit to get it to release iodine at a slightly faster rate - I'm sure sensitization times closer to a half hour would still be safe for normal darkoom usage. I'll be starting those experiments outside, though...

Dibbd said:
If one uses a digital positive, is it possible to expose long enough to get a printed out daguerreotype and omit the red light development? It strikes me that the becquerel process is more akin to a printing out process than a development process.

Koji Tokura does this with his photogram daguerreotypes. I think he's even using glass plates in this one as well. They're quite nice. I think you could probably make it work with a transparency, but it would involve a lot of playing around with densities and whatnot. I personally think you'd be better off just exposing and developing separately, but afaik no one has ever tried it. The results might be neat.

nmp · Nov 25, 2017

ThePhotoChemist said:
I was aware of the basic differences, but you got me going through wikipedia again anyway... Back in the day I meant to work with Lugol's iodine, but mistakenly ordered a bunch of povidone-iodine instead and just kind of stuck with it. I've tried Lugol's once or twice since, but the sensitization times seemed to be about the same. It'd be worth exploring more, as I wasn't very methodical about it. Anyway, I ran across this:

"PVP-I can be loaded into hydrogels, which can be based on carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC), poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA), and gelatin, or on crosslinked polyacrylamide. These hydrogels can be used for wound dressing. The rate of release of the iodine in the PVP-I is heavily dependent on the hydrogel composition: it increases with more CMC/PVA and decreases with more gelatin." (emphasis mine)

It might be possible to tweak the povidone-iodine composition a bit to get it to release iodine at a slightly faster rate - I'm sure sensitization times closer to a half hour would still be safe for normal darkoom usage. I'll be starting those experiments outside, though...

Theoretically, with HI3 bound to the polymer backbone, PVD-I is supposed to be more stable in terms of I2 release than the tincture of iodine and Lugol's iodine (I read this somewhere, forget where.) Regarding the hydrogels, it is interesting that the gelatin slows down the release - perhaps due to its amphoteric nature, it bonds both with the PVP as well as the triiodine thereby limiting the diffusion of the iodine out of the gel. The PVOH is slightly acidic and CMC more so. If I were to make a guess, acidic environment would make make the PVP-HI3 complex less stable, hence more favorable to release elemental iodine. So if you are thinking of tweaking to make the I2 release faster, I wonder if lowering the pH might be one way to achieve that. Just an idle conjecture on my part...

maltfalc · Nov 30, 2017

Dibbd said:
If one uses a digital positive, is it possible to expose long enough to get a printed out daguerreotype and omit the red light development? It strikes me that the becquerel process is more akin to a printing out process than a development process.

absolutely.

nmp said:
If I understand correctly, you still need a negative to do contact printing. It is not a POP process in the sense that you can just increase the exposure and wait for the Dmax to develop. The red light Becquerel process works on the principle that there is a shift in the sensitivity of the halide from primarily the blue and UV regions to the red region in presence of metallic silver in the areas where latent image is formed. In that sense, it is a development of sorts where the original exposure is amplified. It won't happen if you just leave the plate exposed to UV-Vis light indefinitely. Conversely, if you take an un-exposed plate (without a latent image) and expose it to red light, nothing would happen.

the only time i can think of when a negative is needed is if you're making dags meant to be viewed in bright light with a light background reflected in them. it can be a POP process if you want it to be. with becquerel, the sensitivity doesn't shift so much as expand as the surface breaks up and becomes more efficient at reacting with longer wavelengths. a long exposure to uv or white light in a camera (or under a digital positive) will essentially work like you're doing becquerel development with the dark parts of the image masked out. you can even do a sort of reverse becquerel process where you expose the entire plate to white light and then use a long exposure in a camera to selectively "develop" the plate, which also creates an image that's closer to panchromatic than normal.

nmp · Nov 30, 2017

maltfalc said:
absolutely.

the only time i can think of when a negative is needed is if you're making dags meant to be viewed in bright light with a light background reflected in them.

OK. I stand corrected...was confused about how the highlights and shadows are formed - being in reverse to the traditional silver processes.

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