Wet plate imperfections (2). Dirty glass.

Long, long time ago (2 years ago) I wrote a post about collodion imperfections, concentrating on silver stains on collodion plates: LINK. This was meant to be a start of a series of posts about collodion artefacts or problems, showing their examples.

Then I thought, that the simple examples, that I can show and write about with confidence, are probably too obvious for collodion photographers and I've abandoned the idea. 

However I've got a feedback from my students and people who are only starting with the process and would like to see even these 'obvious', (not for everyone), examples of fails. I hope more experienced collodionist will contribute to these examples, showing their problems, solutions and comments.

So here we go - with dirty glass problems.

Those of you, who has put their hands on the process, know how crucial it is to have a perfectly clean glass and how much effort it can take. Simply a dirty glass can cause peeling off the collodion layer in worse case scenario and offer plenty of marks and stains, as a better option.

Glass can be cleaned in many ways. It is recommended to implement at least two different ways of cleaning.

My way of cleaning glass? Well, enough to say, that this part of the process is not my favourite...

When I use collodion formulas with big content of alcohol, (which causes, that collodion film sticks better to glass),usually Poe Boy, I am cleaning glass with warm water with washing liquid first and, when dry - with alcohol.

When I have a bigger batch to clean, I simply do the first step in the dishwasher. Then I wipe each plate individually with alcohol, applied with cotton pad and rub the plate well. If not absolutely happy after these 2 steps and breath test, I rub and polish more, with clean flannel.

When I use collodion mix, which takes extra ether I sub the edges with albumen (1 white of egg + 250 ml of distilled water). Collodion sticks to it very well.

I used to use Rottenstone or Whiting, (as a second step, after washing with water and washing liquid) but it took much more effort and sometimes this method was giving me cleaning marks, although the plate seemed to be perfectly clean. Sometimes it happened even after adding 3rd step and wiping the plate with an alcohol at the end.

I gave it up in favour of the methods described above, which work for me perfectly.

Here are the examples of plates with cleaning marks (residue of Rottenstone) and peeling of edges.

These examples can give an idea on how you can manipulate the process, and create scratches and marks on purpose, (if you want to). 

Springtime collodion season

When the warmer weather started in Ireland, Collodion served me a few lessons how to treat it in these conditions. My winter time confidence vanished together with a higher temperature, but now is slowly rebuilding, (not because it's cold again, but because I've learnt a bit)
Spots, stains, streaks, fogging, ridges all of this happened on my plates. Results were very inconsistent and each session revealed something new.
I won't bore you with all the details, but will just mark, also for myself, a few points important to remember:

- silver bath is the least likely cousing problems. It is good to prepare a proper amount of the bath from previously checked silver nitrate source, get myself a hydrometer and only replenish the silver when needed.
My problems started with the new silver bath mix and I stubbornly suspected it as a main reason of the problems, testing it, measuring pH, etc....
At least I bought myself litmus papers, so now I can be sure my pH is somewhere around 4 to 5 for ambrotypes, (and 6 might be better for negatives) and I've got some baking soda in stock to be able to increase alkalinity.
It's good to sun (expose to sun) the bath from time to time to get rid of contamination.

- developer is very sensitive to temperature and  won't work properly above 18 Celsius degrees. Especially in the dark box it is very easy to get the developer to be too warm. It will cause fogging and stains and many different strange things

- overdeveloping the plates (especially in warm weather) will result in a faded image and stains again. If it's impossible to develop the plate within 15 seconds the exposure time should be extended accordingly

- even though in Irish weather the temperatures don't go to extreme, they are high enough to make my collodion drying too quickly, I think I'd need a separate mix for warm days, with bigger amount of ether and alcohol.

- some sort of mobile/tourist fridge is a necessity for work on location
(not only for keeping collodion cool, but developer and plates as well)

I hope that's it for now. Now I'll be moving to 8x10' format and I guess - new challenges :)

I'd like to thank Gwen Wilkinson - 'Irish collodion guru' :), and Tomasz Mielech, my collodion workshop teacher, for help in resolving these problems!!!

Here are some better plates I managed to make in this period :

and here are the examples of plates with stains,  :)