Dry Plate Photography

Plate Prep and Coating - Coating Ultra Large Format


 
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It can be a challenge to pour-coat plates larger than 4"x5".  The TLF coating system allows consistent coatings for much larger plates and any format.  My Indian panoramic camera (here) shoots 6"x15" plates, with the option of a 5"x12" insert.  The print below is from a 5"x12" plate.  I used the same coating well that I use for 5"x7" plates.  The only new item needed was longer side bars (please see the above sub-section.)

The plate was photographed on a light table with a Pentax K20 camera.  The PS tools used were limited to invertion, an unsharp mask, curves, and a bit of burning and dodging.  There was no spotting or blemish control of any kind on the final print or on the original file of the plate (shown below - both small and very large.



Left: An enlarged crop of the above image.

The original dry plate (no Photoshop).

It was a dark day.  In fact, it started raining while I was exposing the plate.

A pop-up enlargement is available below.

 

Pentax K20 color record.

I re-staged the animals an hour later when the weather cleared.


The Plate — Close Up

To examine an extreme enlargement of the plate, please go here.  Be forewarned that is over half a megabyte in size, and could take awhile to download with slower connections.  The file of the negative is completely raw and unmanipulated (except camera resolution sharpening for web display).


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