Yesterday I had someone coming over for a wet plate collodion demo and that forced me to test my two batches of Collodion, old and new, with the lighting setup from FalconEyes I bought not too long ago. With my old collodion (approx. 1 year old) I couldn’t get an image to form on the plate with 1 minute of exposure. I bought the lights to shorten my exposure time. With the new batch I had an image within 30 seconds. Still have to try it with human skin to see if it’s even shorter (I used a glass head this time) but didn’t have the time yesterday.
The girl came over and I used her for some plates which I made outside because the weather was terrific. With the new batch I had a lot of stripes and stains. When trying the old batch the stains were gone but had trouble pinpointing the exposure as it’s a lot less light sensitive than the new one. The stripes could be caused because the batch came fresh out of the fridge and hadn’t had much time to reach room temperature. I’ll have to look into that because I will need it to work soon (demo SASK St. Niklaas). You can see the stripes in the 4×10″ plate but I like it anyway. Since it’s my first 4×10″ I’m going to keep it!
I look forward to the series I’ll start making of Maastricht soon on this size. It’s a fun size to work with and to look at. These series will moreover be awesome in 10 to 20 years from now as Maastricht is changing so rapidly.
Have a great day y’all!
-Indra
P.s. my “new” camera works like a charm 🙂
Photography Contrastique - Alternative Photographic Processes 
love reading this .. I love your honesty .. wanted to try some plates today but not feeling positive .. by will be inspired by you and at least experiment 🙂 Gorgeous image by the way 🙂
Hey Deborah,
Thank you for your kind words!
If I can inspire you /people to experiment and make photographs I can’t be more happy!
Thanks for your “honest” remark; we all make mistakes and encounter difficulties; if our ego becomes so big we fail to aknowledge and present those as is we have failed as a human.
We are just as flawed as the process we work with 😉
Thank you again!
-Indra
Hi Indra, looks to me like it’s ridges from collodion that is too thick…either too cold or short on solvents. If it still happens at room temp, I would add about 10% of the collodion batch with Ether…lovely 4×10 regardless. K
Hey Kal!
At room temperature the stripes etc where gone. I thought that would be the case. Luckily I kept my older batch of Collodion which is still very usable, especially when working outside.
Thank you!