Extended Dunker

     Here she is extended and ready to go! Cost me a whopping $4.61. So the silver is on its way and the process shall begin all over again. I also noticed that my husband's dremel can cut through 1/8th inch acrylic. I did not realize it and assumed that it would crack the acrylic. Well to my surprise it cut like butter! Another alternative would have been to buy a remnant 1/8th acrylic sheet and have him cut me out another dunker. But since I already had this original dunker when I bought my first silver tank I decided to just go with it. 

     I plan to make more tanks for my new dark box and this first prototype was a very good success! No leaks and affordable for me. If I were to change anything I would probably make the tank out of red acrylic and add a lid as well. I do not know if I were to leave a plate in my silver bath, in my current dark box, if it would become fogged. I have two openings for my hands in the box and when my hands are submerged it is light tight.... I bet if I were to just roll up the openings in the box it should be ok. Another thing to think about... now off to shoot some flowers!

Here is the 4.5" extension piece.

Connected and waiting for the support piece.

I had an extra piece of acrylic so to add more support we glued it on top of the extension piece and it overlapped onto the connect pieces to add stability.

Drying in the sun and waiting to be used.

Burnishing Workbook No. 5

  
 Mark Osterman introduced to the wet plate collodion facebook page burnishing. He posted a gorgeous image and said he burnished the plate and then added finely ground pastels. I definitely want to try this and I did. He said it really gets a full effect after your varnish the plate, (which I plan to do later), but I wanted to show my results. I hope you can see the metallic effect and the cool gray he mentioned. If you look at the image on the right you can see in the sky some of the scratches from my rookie technique. I used my finger and cotton pads. His idea of "polishing" the silver on the plate to produce different hues and tones really is astonishing. I feel so lucky to have been on facebook and seen this post! Thank you Mr. Osterman!

Please visit Scully and Osterman's website to see their work.

Searching for a Carpenter and Price Breakdown

     So the search for a carpenter began today to make a lens board. Honestly I may just ask my dad to do it, but I do not know if he has a drill bit big enough to make a 3.5 inch hole into the board. Anyways I am going back to old faithful... craiglist. I know people may be critical toward the site, but I have literally found all of my favorite things on this site! From 1950s sofas, Victorian stair rail, and my 8x10 wet plate camera. I have written a few people for estimates and we shall see how that goes. Here is a copy of the images I included for the estimate.

    

     In addition, I have begun to take into consideration how much money I have put into wet plate over the last month.... boy does it add up. The camera, tripod, lens, three 8x10 holders, and two lens boards was $575.00. The acrylic for the new silver tank was $28.00. The new brass lens was $38.00. The custom aluminum lens board attachment was $53.00, personally I believe I was ripped off on that one. I am awaiting the final total for the wooden lens board. All in all I am in a total of $694.00 to shoot an 8x10 plate for my 24th birthday. Talk about an expensive experience. Lets hope I can keep the carpenters price under control. Also, this does not include the price of producing a plate with the collodion and silver. By my calculations on plate should cost me, (and this is including every single thing from distilled water to hypo to the varnish), at around $20.80. Now this is a pretty high estimate because I assume in all my calculations shipping, tax, and time. I have done breakdowns for my 4x5 plates and done the calculations for that as well. For me an 8x10 plate would use $2.40 worth of collodion, a whopping $8.40 of silver, $2.00 of varnish, .80 cents of sodium thiosulfate and the glass is $4.64. I know everyone uses different wholesalers to buy their supplies and I personally use Bostick & Sullivan, which I love! I do have to pay for a shipping from New Mexico to Riverside and pay more obviously because they mix everything for me. I do plan to begin to mix my own materials. I do hope that would lower the price of producing a plate. Also, the since I am using glass at $4.64 that price will be lowered because each plate is not a keeper and that will also take into consideration if I use $2.00 worth of varnish. Again, 8x10 plates I think would be for me personally and for something serious. My Sinar P is my everyday rough and rugged camera. Fortunately the smaller plates are not to harmful to my pocket. I am also considering transforming my Pentax 6x7 camera into a wet plate collodion camera via a Polaroid back. 

Workbook Study No. 4: Dust and Scratches

     To save hours and hours of time there is one trick that has allowed my work flow to be efficient and edit images in a snap. Being that I have a mobile darkroom my plates do get dirty during transport, just the nature of the beast. After varnishing and scanning my plates appear to have tons of dust and spots all over them. Before I knew about dust and scratches I would literally spend hours cleaning up my plates or film. After discovering to just go to Filter>Noise>Dust and Scratches my life changed forever! Sure I had my 5 minute tantrum and yelled and screamed that I never knew about this feature. Long story short it is AMAZING! You do have to be very careful because this filter will also make your image blurry and take away sharpens in edges. Learn from my mistake and give it a go.

Here is one of those images I never thought I could give up and wrote it off. Thanks to randomly discovering Dust and Scratches it lives!