Wet Plate Photography

Comments on article "Wet Plate Photography"
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Big Sven Part of every school curriculum should entail pupils learning to make a technical drawing (blueprint) of a glass-plate camera, then make the component parts and assemble them into a camera (making a lens might be asking too much?) then learn to take photos via the wet-plate method. Outside, in a tent!

I can't even begin to count the number of subjects such a system would cover. And instead of all that boring watching the teacher chalking-up a lot of gibberish on the blackboard the pupils might actually find lessons FUN!

Those first photographers have my full respect. Despite the difficulties, lack of materials and knowledge, they took photos that still enthrall us.

I'm sure digital is coming to an end, and we will come back to 35mm cassette film cameras. Digital can never match the superb colours, resolution and sharpness of film. But using digital technology there's no reason we can't have small printer-like portable developing-machines with snap-in chemical bottles for we home-consumers. Then we can either scan-in the negs or slot the neg into another machine, snap-in the cassette with the photo-paper, and print-out the prints we want.

I still think the Polaroid system can be developed further, for all the above was included in one single photo-print paper!

I knew Cecil Beaton, and tried to get him to teach me how to make plates. He was The Royal Portrait Photographer, and always used glass-plates for this. Unfortunately, he hummed-and-hawed and muttered about not wanting to give away the secrets that got him the job. But I do know he used masked-off areas, using several layers of silver-halide of differing grain and speed. He did on the plate what all other photographers did later in the darkroom.		 6/10/2010
Kirit Sheth Why not show the chemical reactions involved ? Much simpler than wading through the lengthy descriptions. 1/19/2009
Quinn It's a good article on wet plate. What prompted you to write it? And why didn't you publish some modern images with it? Check out my site at collodion dot com or wetplate dot com. 5/27/2005
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