How do I get into doing wet plate/tin type without selling my home. The intrepid large format cameras seem to be the most budget friendly but I’ve also heard they suck fuck and don’t come with half the shit you need outside of actual chemicals.
>>4475641Intrepid is not the cheapest. A cambo/calumet/sinar monorail can be had for 200-300 dollars. LF lenses can be had for under 300 dollars, and with wetplate softer lenses kinda sorta work better, although wetplate colloidion "grain" is as fine as microfilm, so if you wanted to enlarge your glass plates a nice sharp lens will serve you very well.You can buy wetplate kits from bostick and sullivan. They are perfect for beginner. The most expensive part is the silver chloride, but it lasts a very long time with proper maintenance.The cheapest way to get plates is to buy 20x24 sheets of glass and then cut 4x5 plates. It's insanely annoying and time consuming to properly clean them. The black plated aluminum is only a bit more expensive.Zebra makes a decent wetplate holder for pretty cheap. Kinda dslicate, but it works well and is nice to use.When I was shooting wetplate the cost was less per plate than similar sized film.Start with 4x5 wetplate. Almost everything about it is easier and way cheaper. 8x10 cameras usually start around 800 for a giant heavy 100+ year old wooden one and then a monorail is anywhere from 1200 to 2000. Modern field 8x10s like chamonix can run upwards of 5k dollars. Deardorff 8x10 with a replaced bellows is pretty great for around 2k.It's very fun and challenging. I would definitely recommend giving it a shot. :D
>>4475647Silver nitrate solution not silver chloride. You would use silver chloride to make contact prints from your glass wetplates.
>>4475649Yeah the calumet is probably my go to after looking further into it. I’ve been wanting to try it for a while now, my buddy and I are friends with a photographer who got pretty famous doing Polaroids while fright hopping. Kind of trying to capture the folky vibe of it.
>>4475651*freight
>>4475651Just remember that the process requires a mobile darkroom if you plan on going out of a studio to photograph stuff. You can make one pretty easily by using a red glass pane glued on top of a light tight darkroom box that you work in. The sun gets filtered into safelight you can use to work under. Battery powered redlight may also work well, but you'll find that you may be working a single scene for a few hours. There's a lot of trial and error involved in the process.You'll also need a watertight/travel safe dip tank for sensitizing your plates. They're a bit more expensive, but work all around better than the cheaper dip tanks.There is a very steep learning curve to the entire process, so you'll be stuck at home for a while getting a solid grasp on everything. Buy like 100 4x5 plates if you can. One thing to remember that fucked me a first. You MUST have good ventilation in your darkroom. If you don't your plates will fog. Took me many hours to figure that one out.I think the folky vibe + wetplate would work really really well. Wetplate portraits are special, but you need a shitload of light for them.
