Coating my own glass plates?

[tetrisattack]

Got into an interesting conversation with one of the photo-geek kids at the college. He said that one of these days he'd like to work with liquid light (a liquid, brush-on emulsion), and I remarked about how it'd be neat to paint it into glass plates, and then use them in a view camera...

Sadly, the more I think about it, the trickier it gets. Getting the emulsion onto a plate is the easy part. Cutting 8x10" picture frame glass down to 4x5" is also not terribly difficult. But modifying a standard Graflok-style film holder to accomodate a glass plate -- is it even possible? Do they still make glass plate holders for view cameras? If so, where do you get one?

Any tips and idle speculation from all you armchair handymen would be appreciated. 🙂

 

[wlewisiii]

Start here: http://www.alternativephotography.com/ It's interesting stuff.

Edit: Here too 😀 http://albumen.stanford.edu/

William

 

[oftheherd]

That got me to thinking. I don't remember if any of my LF holders can use glass plates or not. I will have to dig around a little to see if any of the old 9x12 cameras have holders that will. I don't think any of my others will. I don't think any of my 9x12 cameras will either. To my knowledge, most were fitted for film even though you often see them advertised as plate cameras as well.

Oddly enough, my Mamiya Press 23 cut film holders can use glass plates. They have an insert for film. If that is removed, glass plates can be used. Now haven't I kept telling you all that the Super Press 23 (even the Universal) was one of the best RF cameras out there? 😀

 

[oftheherd]

Thinking about this a little more, I suspect you could modify a regular 4x5 (or even 8x10) holder by cutting out the middle area, making room for a glass plate. Not something I would want to mess with, but if you really want to do glass, it should be possible. You would want to be sure your added some shim to the back of the plate if necessary to bring it back to the proper film plane for proper focus.

 

[lubitel]

I never tried anything like this, but there is a very detailed book about making your own LF Cameras, chemicals, paper negative, glas plates, lenses and etc. its called Primitive Photography, maybe it helps.