Coating plates

[giellaleafapmu]

I hope I will not abuse the forum people's patience by starting a new off-topic thread.

I have a few RF and I ocasionally use them but I enjoy even more taking large format pictures and building up pinhole and hiperfocal cameras. I have almost exclusively used 4x5 and I am in the process of building a 8x10mm pinhole but I cannot stop thinking bigger and bigger...

The problem is that bigger here is also dearer when you go to films, so I was thinking to try some old technique to coat plates. Does any of the members of this forum has any advice to give to me. Books, texts, more apropriate forum...

For me the main concern would be to try the easiest and more environmentally friendly process first. I have access to laboratories and to proper breathing aparatuses but I just do not enjoy too much working with poisonous stuff. Of course, being able to buy the chemicals from "usual chemical shops" without having anyone to think that I am going to perform tremendous crimes could have some influence in the choice of the process to try first...
Finally, I would discarge all the processes which produce plate with such a short duration that it is necessary to make the coating "on the field"

Thanks in advance,

Giella lea Fapmu

 

[kmack]

I've been looking into the same thing.
1 See Alternative Photography.com for some good info on Alt processes
2 the APUG forums. Lots of good stuff in the LF and Alt Process forums.

 

[dmr]

There's quite a bit of discussion about alternative processes and coating plates over at www.apug.org.

Look in particular for posts by a user named Photo Engineer, a retired, Big Yellow emulsion guru.

 

[BrianShaw]

APUG has a "Plate Camera" forum in addition to the "Emusion" forum that PE posts in.

 

[Todd.Hanz]

just saw this today...DeJaVu eh?

http://www.freestylephoto.biz/sc_prod.php?cat_id=108&pid=2528

looks like an easy way to get started, thought about the same myself.

todd

 

[tetrisattack]

I actually bought that kit and did a few tintypes. The kit makes enough for five good ones. The results are good! The surface can be tough and leathery if you coat the emulsion thick enough, and there's a strange three-dimensional translucency to them.

You can either shoot them in-camera or project slides onto them for better control (and a quicker way to fufill the requirements of your teacher 😉. If you shoot them in-camera, buy a junk film holder, because you have to cut them down to fit in the holder and they tend to scratch the hell out of the insides once you've done so.