Starting Collodion 4

First Plate!
Saturday.

Peter offered to come to my house to help see me through the first day, this was very generous of him and made the most enormous difference to my progress - Thanks Peter.

David Summerill also came along and all of the images are taken by him - Thanks Dave.

The glass plates need to be cut to size with the glass cutter and a ruler then the rough edges should be smoothed with the diamond file, rinsed, dried then thoroughly cleaned using the plate cleaner and cotton wool pad, then polished until completely spotless with the cloth.  Using a Q tip I painted a thin line of albumen solution around the edges of the plate.
The plate is now ready to be used.

Before I could pour the plate, the camera had to be set up, focus checked and aperture etc chosen.  This all has to be done prior to pouring the plate as the image has to be taken and the plate developed whilst the collodion is still wet ( wet plate process)
I poured the collodion on to the plate.  The idea is to get a smooth, even coating on the plate.  Mine was a bit lumpy, wrinkled and didn't really cover the whole plate.  Oh well, have to start somewhere!
Once the collodion has been poured, it needs to form a skin but NOT dry, to check for this I touched the corner of the plate gently with my finger tip to see if it left an imprint.
Now into the silver bath for 3 minutes
When the plate goes into the silver bath it's time to turn out the light and set the timer for 3 minutes.  Red safelight is now all I can use.
After the 3 minutes the plate was lifted from the silver bath, the back wiped with kitchen roll to get as much excess silver off as possible and loaded into the plate holder.
I took the plate out to the camera and made my image.
The plate was then brought back to the darkroom, removed from the holder and developed.  This was done by quickly and carefully pouring a small amount of developer across the plate.  This is by far the trickiest part (for me) the dev. must cover the plate, mustn't sit still on the plate, shouldn't be poured in one spot, only use the correct amount etc. The developer is stopped by pouring distilled water across the plate.  Once it's developed it needs rinsing under the tap, I found that adjusting the flow of water gradually whilst rinsing worked well and reduced the risk of blasting the film from the glass.  The plan is to rinse the plate until you can no longer see a greasy looking residue across the image.
The it was the best bit, fixing the plate.  This washes away all the undeveloped silver and leaves behind the image (a little like developing in the darkroom).

It was very exciting to see the image appear. I love the way the plate is both negative and positive.
The rest of the day was spent experimenting like this, only stopping for a bacon sandwich and tea!

Touching the plate to see if it's ready for the silver bath.

Placing the plate in the fixer (Sodium Thiosulphate)