The previous weekend, I did a little wet-plate demo for some interested folks at Artomatic, the big exhibit at which I've got some work hanging. Well, one of the students at my demo went back to tell his college instructor about my demo, and now I've got an invite to repeat it for the college class at Northern Virginia Community College. I might also be teaching/demo-ing platinum/palladium for them. This is really great, as it helps to redeem some of the sting from getting rejected from grad schools...

TheFlyingCamera

How much is grain per detail (and tonal smoothness) a function of format size?

First, the film grain per area is a constant of format size. This is important.

We can estimate grain increase per one stop increase in required film sensitivity as ~2x. In other words, if you shoot a film at ISO 200 then there will be ~2x more grain per detail than the same shot at ISO 100.

Obviously this is a very rough approximation and a rather pessimistic one at that....

keithwms

I currently shot with several different medium format camera systems and have for over 35 years. One would think, I would know or have found the answer to this question by my by now.

Does anyone know for a fact, if the RH12/24 singer or grayflex film backs will mount to the RB Pro, Pro S, or Pro SD System camera and actually be a usable entity? I would like to be able to do 6x6 format on this system thus eliminating a couple of other complete camera systems I have been totting around...

cburdicksr

I went for a jaunt in the countryside today, took a drive up to Harpers Ferry. On the way home, I stopped off at an antiques mall and found a lovely 1/4 plate daguerreotype for $95. No case, but the image, the mat and the glass were all in excellent condition, with the packet still well sealed, so no major oxidation or fading. I'm going to shop around for a modern replica case for it to better protect it.

TheFlyingCamera

Well, not exactly, but I did give my wet plate demo and discussion yesterday at Artomatic. I used a box brownie for the camera, and coated my plates on some black glass cut down to the brownie's size - 3 3/4 x 4 1/2. We were getting the exposure pretty close on the third plate, but I ran out of developer. The bigger success was just being able to demonstrate the process, and have an interested audience. There were six folks in all who came for the program, and all left interested in the process....

TheFlyingCamera