Is exposing a wet plate possible with an enlarger?

<p>Say if I had a 35mm negative and, using an enlarger, projected it onto a wet plate would the plate be exposed properly? Is that possible?<br>

I don't know much about the Collodion process, but I'm assuming this question has been asked in the past...</p>

<p>I'm asking because I want to put together a dark room so I'm making a list of the kind of equipment I'll need based on what I want to do.</p>

<p>If this has already been done, do any of you have any links you'd like to share?</p>

<p>I would think it would work. Check out these sites:<br>

apug.org<br>

unblinkingeye.com<br>

Best regards,<br>

/Clay</p>

<p>Well, you may have a challenge getting the exposure done before the wet plate dries out. Also, you're going to get a wet plate positive, not a negative. At least for tintypes, the exposure needs to be a negative.<br>

You could, of course, enlarge onto film first to get a large positive, and then do near-contact printing on the wet plate to get a negative again.</p>

 

<p>John Shriver,<br>

That's something I was wondering about.</p>

<p>But what is near-contact printing?</p>

<p>I suspect that wet plates are very slow, even compared to photographic paper. You might try a point source head. They're very bright.</p>

<p>I would advise extreme caution!! Ether ,alcohol and Collodion are flammable Any spark and they are wondering what happened to your eyebrows or worse. Collodion="Gun Cotton" dissolved in nitric acid. A well ventilated space is always best. The last time I messed with wet plate stuff ,the aprox ASA was .6 in bright daylight.<br>

chris</p>

<p>do you think an eight second exposure would dry out the plate?</p>

 

<p>I assume that if you had the settings on the enlarger already set, you could expose the plate and get it into the developer all within 30 seconds</p>

<p>It is completely possible and safe. Exposures vary from 30 seconds to 3 minutes. No worries. You can print you color slides, or bw slides, but preferably color. You have around 5 minutes (if the temperature is not warm enough to dry the wet plate) to do your exposure in camera or in the enlarger. Forget about the nitric acid and hazardous materials. If people could do this 150 years ago, why couldn't you? Remember to alway be safe about darkroom procedures. That would be more than enough.<br>

Just keep in mind it is never the same to make a wet plate in real life than doing it in the darkroom...<br>

Good luck!</p>

 

<p>I figured color wouldn't show up...what do you mean I can have color prints rodrigo?</p>

<p>I don't mean you can get color prints, I mean you can print FROM color slides. The result will obviously be b/w on your wet plate. You can also try making autochromes, which is the color version of collodion...</p>

<p>Yes, it is possible.</p>

<p>I have a wet-plate collodion <strong>print</strong> done on opaque white glass on the bookshelf in my office.</p>

<p>Do any of you know of any sites that have examples of purely collodion prints (not exposed in camera)? Or do any of you , like Louie Powell, have any work they would like to share?</p>

<p>I am thinking if offering Collodion prints to my clients in the future and would like to see if it is worth it at all...or if I should just wait until i have a large format setup.</p>

<p>Also, can you point me in the right direction to find some information on autochromes?</p>