I had another wet plate holder made from an 8×10″ film holder; this one works a little better than the previous wooden holder…

A plate holder for 18x24cm plates, constructed from an 8×10″ film holder.

…and some more bad ambrotypes here… screwed up by my inexperience and awkwardness — also overexposure and maybe some issues with the chemistry…

I used my OHP f:5/300mm lens on a 8×10″ camera, with the aperture wide open. It was a bright day, so I exposed only for one second… but even that was too much, and the image is overexposed.

The second try (don’t ask what happened to the collodion layer — I don’t know!), exposed about as fast as I could remove and replace the lens cap, half a second I guess… couldn’t stop down (to increase the exposure time) because I don’t have any stops for this lens. Still a bit overexposed.

The chemistry used here is based on the “New Guy” formula, introduced by Quinn Jacobson. I will tell more about my mix of chemicals after experimenting some more — and hopefully getting one proper ambrotype plate!

A still life in artificial light, exposure 10 seconds… I think there must be either fogging or some kind of surface scum in my plates, I will need to fix that somehow…

Talking of Quinn Jacobson, there are very nice videos and descriptions of the wet plate process on his website.

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