i made a handful of nice tintypes today, and ambrotypes using the dry plate method.
and i am looking forward to making photographs like this … it took a lot of testing and tweaking on my end.
first i skimped on the amount of emulsion needed to make this work. i have coated plates for years and i used to be able
to get a great image enlarging onto a skimpy skim-coated sheet of glass. tiny bit of emulsion goes a LONG way …
… not with this process !
i coated my plates with a THICK layer of emulsion. i actually DOUBLE coated my plates. once coat with AG PLUS the emulsion that
is recommended to use for this process because of its silver content and probably because of its viscosity … the second coat was with Liquid Light VC.
when the VC is heated it STAYS LIQUID for a long time, and it is easy to work with. AG PLUS is thick but it also cools down fast and gets clumpy
it was all good though.
I am in the midst of making a cold bench / cold table that is flat / level and very cold to chill-set my plates and make them even better.
when i can get the kinks out of this website i will post a few of my plates, but right now all i have are words to show for my efforts.
if you have any thoughts about doing this sort of dry plate tintype, it is worth the effort and time … and believe what rockland colloid says when they
suggest you use a lot of emulsion and rate it at about asa 1.
