Photographing Like They Did in The 1850's

in photography •  7 years ago 

Back in the 1850's photography was a lot more challenging than today. Wet plate photography is one of the earliest photographic techniques, invented by Frederick Scott Archer in 1851. This were even long before film were invented, and photographs had to be made on metal plates (Tintype) or glass plates (Ambrotype).

The photo below is a 8x10 inch tintype I did in 2014. Wet plate collodion require a lot of light, and even in bright daylight the exposure is 3-6 seconds. The ISO is around 1 (yep, ONE). How light sensitive the plate is depends on the chemicals, but 2-3 is the highest ISO you can get.

wetplatepostimg.jpg


This is another photo from the same day, but shot in my studio. Exposure time is 12 seconds with massive light sources.

_MG_7088-som-smartobjekt-1.jpg


This is in my studio. The large box behind me is a dark box used to develop the photographs

IMG_3230-som-smartobjekt-1.jpg


You need a huge camera to make 8x10" photo

collodion3.jpg


Framed 8x10" Tintype

colframed.jpg


Frederic Scott Archer 1855 - The inventor of wet plate photography

Frederick_Scott_Archer.jpg
Photo: Public Domain

The Wet Collodion Process (Video)

Ian Ruther Silver and Light

This guy uses his car as a wet plate camera, and the photographs are amazing.

Authors get paid when people like you upvote their post.
If you enjoyed what you read here, create your account today and start earning FREE STEEM!
Sort Order:  

Wow! I imagine your models had to sit still for a long time... is it a long process btw?

Between 4-20 seconds. It's usually pretty quick once you have set up everything. It takes around 10-20 minutes to make a picture, and that's a ready to frame/hang on the wall photo.

Well, 20 secs don't sound too long. I read somewhere that people were so serious in old photos because of the shooting process, so I imagined something really really long. Anyway, it's amazing how your photos look like those taken in the 19th century. Great work!

Excellent post. Nice cameras :-)

when i was studying photography many years ago i did a lot of my portraits on 5"x4".
good to see traditional photography :-)
Ive recently been looking at getting a 5"x4" or 10"x8" camera as they are so cheap atm compared to what they were when i was at college.

here are some of my 5"x4" portraits......
https://steemit.com/photography/@pcste/my-photography-heidi

https://steemit.com/photography/@pcste/my-photography-portraits-tamsin-non-digital-original-work

Thanks for your comment. Yes, analog photography is getting popular again. Nice photographs :)

Great to see such an old technique still being put to use. It brings another quality to the work, that digital for all of its options, does not deliver.

Thanks, I can agree on that :)

Yooooo!!! This is so good. And placed next to a 19th century tintype I wouldn't be able to tell the difference with yours. Great work!

Thank You :)

Assume pic

The @OriginalWorks bot has determined this post by @dieterschneider to be original material and upvoted it!

ezgif.com-resize.gif

To call @OriginalWorks, simply reply to any post with @originalworks or !originalworks in your message!

Please note that this is a BETA version. Feel free to leave a reply if you feel this is an error to help improve accuracy.

This post has received a 1.59 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @dieterschneider.

old is gold, passion is passion , art of love, nice them, nice content, and subject super words use, and photo
how are you, it is really nice content post i am sami ,new steemit commer, i am new here, how are you,? can we be freind here, if you like , i am not old here, just learning , but your photo is nice,, your post is super, hope you will get success here, keep it up, i like your post very much,,

Cool post! I wasn't really aware that people still use these cameras, but I guess it's no surprise. It's quite stylish! The dudes in the second video got all my respect for dedicating themselves to the process like that!