The only exception I make is with the gelatin itself since this is a food product. In addition to using gloves while handling photo chemicals, always keep photo utensils separate from cooking utensils.Īny container or utensil used for these chemicals should never be used for cooking afterward, no matter how much you may have cleaned them.

Safety when working with the silver gelatin dry plate process This article is no more than a practical starting point. For alternatives please feel free to experiment on your own and/or read the sources in the bibliography. I don’t pretend to be the final authority in this subject, and I am aware that for every step there are alternatives but for simplicity sake my instructions are essentially just the procedure that I use. Their main concern has been silver gelatin emulsion in all its possibilities, while my concern is specifically with the dry plate process and how it can be accomplished under difficult conditions and limited space. This article is essentially a synthesis of several scattered sources however, these other sources deal with dry plate negatives in passing only. If you do, by all means, consider that the next step in bringing this process back to life. Of course, the use of a ready-made emulsion is a short cut, but well worth it, especially since I have almost no working space at home in which to make my own emulsion according to original specifications. Once I learned that Liquid Light was in fact blue-sensitive only (and not orthochromatic) I made up my mind to proceed. My attempts to find a blue-sensitive film, especially one on glass, were fruitless and so, I concluded that I would have to create my own. Since modern emulsions are panchromatic and have anti-halation backings, among other things, their look is far different.

My purpose in examining the dry plate process has been to understand and recreate the characteristic look of late 19th Century photography. This is especially practical for me because so much of my work is urban in scope (San Francisco), and a portable darkroom is pretty much out of the question. One can pour the emulsion on the glass plate, allow it to dry, carry it about on expeditions, and develop it within a reasonable amount of time no need for portable darkrooms, etc.

Developed in 1871, this process is far more practical than the preceding wet collodion process, and is the direct forerunner of roll film. While there has been a resurging interest in wet plate collodion photography, partly due to a rising interest in the American Civil War Era, the silver gelatin dry plate process has not received much attention. The silver gelatin dry plate process in a nutshell: Not a printing process, like all the other liquid emulsion techniques, but an in-the-camera technique that complements the wet plate process.

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