Today in San Diego was just one of those cold winter days up in the mountains at the ManCave. Dave, my dad and I decided to come up for a visit before the holidays and to also work more on the full plate camera. One of the issues that I was having was when the ground glass was pulled out (in order to put in the plate holder) it made this terrible screeching noise that just wants to make you cringe. Turns out it was just a screw catching onto an edge.
 | The second part of today was finally adding the lens board my dad made and mounting the lens! It was all very exciting. I feel like I'm a step closer with finally doing full plate Ferrotypes and Negatives! I have many plans in store for 2016 and I can't wait to sit down and start to plan everything out. More importantly, add more updated content to my website for whomever wants to see. |
One of the first things I noticed when finally mounting a lens, is that the image reflected into my ground glass was very very dark. I have gotten used to always having my lens wide open (which made the rejecting image brighter!) because I didn't make water-house stops for it over the years, now the largest aperture I have is 3.7 on the lens mounted on the full plate camera. Once a plate holder is made, I can't wait to test out everything and make note of all my exposures!
f/stop 256??
When it came towards the end of the day, one of things Dave has been wanting to teach me for awhile was Albumen Printing. Today we started with the first step, making the paper! Dave had previously made up the Albumen before hand. Which consists of 60 egg whites and ammonia chloride (what happened to the yolk is still a mystery).
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The first part was me watching before I did the hands on part.I watched Dave remove all the bubbles from the Albumen till it was a smooth finish.
Then he gently and slowly put the paper face down and let it float on the surface for a couple of minutes. The important part of this process is to make sure you DON'T get any bubbles on the surface of your paper. It can cause problems later when printing from a negative.
Then he gently and slowly put the paper face down and let it float on the surface for a couple of minutes. The important part of this process is to make sure you DON'T get any bubbles on the surface of your paper. It can cause problems later when printing from a negative.
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Next step was to slowly lift it out of the tray and hang it over something luke warm ( in our case, a hotplate) till it dried. We did about 10 sheets today! Next step is coating the paper with silver nitrate!
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Decided to take my camera out to photograph my favorite parts of Daves Mancave :)
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