Camera restoration

[Optimark]

I’ve been a member of APUG for probably 10 years now, great resource. There is at least one person in Melbourne, who is on APUG doing wet plate. I saw a wet plate presentation, slide show, not actual demonstration a couple of years ago in Melbourne. Very interesting.

Collodion does look good on glass, recently I saw some examples on black something, which I would think was aluminium, but I cannot remember. It may have been a plastic black based product, cannot remember now.

Is your Toyo an 810G? That would be the logical unit for fiddling the way you are.

One of my 4x5’s is A Toyo 45G which is a very solid camera, I used both a 4X5 and an 8X10 Toyo monorail cameras in a work environment about 30 years ago, pretty much indestructible.

480mm 3.8, ooh, that is fast.

[mikl]

Yes Opti, the Toyo is a beautiful camera. The aluminium is probably trophy plate, like the stuff they engrave "footballer of the year" etc on it works well but glass is way more unique, lot more work but beautiful to work with. With the trophy plate you just peel off the protective cover and pour your collodion but there has been some issues with random sheets "gassing" after being peeled and the collodion not adhering ok if you leave them pealed for a couple of hours. My 4x5 is a Sinar P1 and typically swiss..... The Germans have nothing on them for solid!
Anyway my lens finally turned up and it is HUGE so I knocked up a lens board out of ply (mahogany jointed properly one to come when I get a minute) And the image on the ground glass is probably the first through there for, I don't know 50 or 60 years. Also making a lens cap for it out of Kauri and a 160mm PVC pipe cap, near perfect fit! Pic is only roughed out so be nice lol.
Michael

I’ve been a member of APUG for probably 10 years now, great resource. There is at least one person in Melbourne, who is on APUG doing wet plate. I saw a wet plate presentation, slide show, not actual demonstration a couple of years ago in Melbourne. Very interesting.

Collodion does look good on glass, recently I saw some examples on black something, which I would think was aluminium, but I cannot remember. It may have been a plastic black based product, cannot remember now.

Is your Toyo an 810G? That would be the logical unit for fiddling the way you are.

One of my 4x5’s is A Toyo 45G which is a very solid camera, I used both a 4X5 and an 8X10 Toyo monorail cameras in a work environment about 30 years ago, pretty much indestructible.

480mm 3.8, ooh, that is fast.

[mikl]

Had to make a lens cap for the Leisgang so I had some old NZ Kauri, 100 year old leather from a piano stool cover and the left over English felt form the camera stand so a bit of chopping, shaping, a bit of glue tiny bit of swearing and hey presto.... 1 lens cap.
Michael

[Robson Valley]

Innovative lens cap. Will the rim be light-dark enough for shutter use?

Magnificent image on the GG. I wonder what all that GG has seen in it's lifetime.

[mikl]

Should be light tight, it is pretty firm on the barrel so I am hoping it will loosen up over time and use. I tried to find out the history of the camera from the place I purchased it but they either didn't know or wouldn't tell me. Shame really as the history is just as interesting to me as the actual camera.
Michael

[Robson Valley]

I'm just thinking of all the alternative chemistries that you can mess with.
I suppose that it's up to you now to give that camera some history.

You know what I've never seen (and I like museums)?
I'd like to see a time line, punctuated with real examples of the various light sensitive processes
which appeared along the way in the development of photography.

[Optimark]

I'm just thinking of all the alternative chemistries that you can mess with.
I suppose that it's up to you now to give that camera some history.

You know what I've never seen (and I like museums)?
I'd like to see a time line, punctuated with real examples of the various light sensitive processes
which appeared along the way in the development of photography.

Here you go, although you will have to wait until 2019 before it re-opens.

Having a sister in-law living in a Munich suburb helps with, but this photographic exhibition, which was put together to celebrate 150 years of photography, is stunning. I spent the best part of 5 hours there and didn't cover everything. The missus, being German, could translate some of the longer German epistles. Although the exhibition is in German, there are English sub titles, if you get my drift. But some of the English was a bit brief, or in some obscure bits, non existent. Nonetheless, absolutely brilliant exhibition.

Saw one of the worlds first instant picture booths, which, if my memory serves me, was for a Chicago World fair I think in the late 1800's. That particular piece really blew both of us away as we didn't realise instant pictures (relatively) were around so early in the photographic journey.

Mick.

Deutsches Museum: Foto + Film

[mikl]

There really hasn't been that many advances in "capture"....... Daguerreotype 1839, then Collodion 1843 (tin and Ambro type or wetplate... this is what I do) then dry plate or Silver Gelatin 1870's, then film... cellulose and plastic etc then digital.... All except digital are based on Silver of some sort, Dags were Silver iodide, wet plate was Silver Nitrate, Dry plates were a gelatin (wouldn't rub off as it is hardened in the process) with Silver, even film has silver in it.
Printing is a whole other world with so many processes it ain't funny a lot involve noble metals such as platinum, silver, gold etc.
Please not I am far from a historian and I have really only started to scratch the surface in trying to perfect this process and the above is very very brief but you get the idea.

Nothing is more pure than light hitting an excited metal to give you an image! It is a beautiful process! Oh and to give you an idea of the speed a normal outdoors shot on a nice day with film you would use a film speed of say 100 ISO, cloudy day or getting dark say 400 ISO, Collodion has a speed of .5.... yep 1/2 of 1 ISO and it gets less as the collodion ages so that is why the exposures were in the multiple seconds.
Michael

[Robson Valley]

ISO 0.5?? There's a fair heritage here of old stuff where portraits of several seconds were common.
Frontier photo studios had a part covered with thin white cloth for light.

Photography has been a popular part of my family's historical activity, going back into the late 1800's.
Being the oldest, the family archives were all fobbed off on me. I'll guess there's a thousand+ negs,
cellulose nitrate and all. All the usual paperwork stuff, as well. Ruddy boxes and boxes of it.

Anyway, I began souping B&W film and printing at home at age 12 or so.
A decade on, I looked into alternative processing. I ran out of money and time, Uni got in the way.
I do too many other things now. But, I'd still like to see a demonstration of the techniques which
led to modern(?) B&W films and papers. I still think that platinum prints are elegant.
I can print my own 4x5 to 16x20. I've got 5" x7" B&W film, want to fool with pinhole.

Put a canopy on the back of a bummed out old ute and there's your darkroom!

[mikl]

Well no project is complete until it is used for its intended purpose ...... so I give you matt, shot on glass using the 1853 wet plate or Ambrotype method.

[Optimark]

On the money there, nailed the focus to boot.

Mick.

[Robson Valley]

And, there's the proof. Congratulations on the build.

[Optimark]

I saw this link on a photographic forum I frequently visit, thought it may allow members here who don't quite know the ins and outs of wet plate photography a bit of a peak of another modern day practitioner.

https://apenasimagens.com/en/wet-pla...roger-sassaki/

Mick.