6½ × 8½

This is just a very quick post to let everyone know why this normally quiet place is, well, silent at the moment. I am in the middle of a move right now, and most of my photo goodies are being put in cardboard boxes for a few months. But here are a few things I plan to add - as soon as I get a functional darkroom back in order: A comparison of various portrait lenses for the whole plate format. I have an embarrassing collection of old portrait and soft focus lenses that work on this format. I plan to do some side-by-side shots with a  

1. 11 inch Wollensak portrait 1A (versar)
2. 11-1/2 inch vitax
3. 11-1/2 inch verito
4. 305mm Kodak portrait (I know this lens rocks!)
5. 9 (and change) inch Verito
6. 12 inch universal Heliar
7. 10-1/2 inch Heliar

 Sounds like big fun. More later…. Clay   

is going on with Whole Plate?

I’ve been on the road a fair bit the last two weeks, and checking in on what’s happening in the photo world on occasion. Best I can tell, there have been three major photo stories recently:

1. Canon announces the 1DSMkIII and 40D cameras! Yeah! Medium format pixel density and just-okay Canon L glass. Hooray!!!
2. Nikon, pissed that Canon jumped the gun, announces the new D3 and D300 cameras. Nikon wakes up and realizes that Canon somehow invented a full frame DSLR while they weren’t looking. About four or five years ago. Realizes the best thing to do is to respond with a product announcement of a yet-to-be-shipped camera
3. Everybody in the quiet little backwater of neo-Luddite large format photography wakes from a century-long slumber and realizes that whole plate actually is the best format on the planet. In one week, we have had :
   • Canham announce a new whole plate camera
   • An attempt to do a group order for 5 whole plate Ebony cameras
   • Chamonix announces ‘Yeah, we can do whole plate too’
   • Bidding wars erupt on ebay for any random assemblage of folded leather and orthogonally organized old varnished wood that could conceivably be called a whole plate camera

So what gives? This format has somehow pulled a full modifed Lazarus move and emerged as the hot new thing.

My theory on all this is a little speculative, but I think makes some sense. Here goes: Everyone schedules their optometry appointments for their kids right before school starts up again. And often go ahead and have their own eyes done at the same time. So is it possible that about a hundred people or so in the world simultaneously discovered that they are now in full-on bifocal territory and realize that the damned 4×5 camera is just going to get ever harder to focus and visualize on the ground glass? And when they began contemplating moving up to 8×10, it just seemed too pretentious, too Weston-esque, too ‘already been done to death’, too, well, large? And that whole plate offers ‘better than 5×7′ and ’smaller than 8×10′ perfect format?

I don’t know, but it seems like a real phenomenom at the moment. I can’t wait to see what happens when all those Fotoman whole plate holders flood back in to the USA!

Clay

P.S. I am signing the posts now, because although this blog is not quite ready for prime time, apparently there are people reading it. I was scolded by a person on the altphoto list for posting anything anonymous on the internet, so I retroactively went back and added a signature. Which brings me to this: if you are reading this, and want to contribute a thought, an article, or anything else that directly or indirectly relates to whole plate camera photography, send it on in. If I decide that you are a responsible adult and won’t be posting either hard core pornography or photos of kittens in teacups, I might even give someone some limited admint privileges. But in any event, it would be great to get some additional content.

Printing Platinum and Palladium with Rives BFK

This has become one of my favorite papers lately. It is a print makers paper, which means that it has more internal sizing than external sizing, and tends to be pretty absorbent as compared to a paper such as COT320, Platine or Platinotype. But the hot-pressed version of this paper has a wonderful texture - soft without being ‘bumpy’ - and a seeming ability to create very rich, deep and velvety blacks, with only a single coating of sensitizer and metal. The paper is readily available in several weights at most art supply stores across the country. Once it is treated, it is also dimensionally stable, making it an excellent choice for multiple printing techniques such as gum-over-platinum. It is also inexpensive. In other words, it has a lot going for it. But like all papers, it has its own quirky requirements for making rich prints. So here is my working method for making it sing.

Buy the paper

First, you must buy the right paper. I would recommend buying either the 280gsm or the 175gsm Rives BFK hot press in white as a starting point. One of the maddening things about Rives BFK is that it seems to have as many versions as there are stars in the evening sky. But the two just mentioned are excellent choices.

Treat the paper

The paper as it comes is buffered and thus inimical to the acidic platinum and palladium chemistry. So the first task is to soak the paper for five minutes in a warm bath of 1-2% oxalic acid. I make this bath by adding 30g of oxalic acid to 2 liters of 110 degree water and pouring it in a large tray. I put the paper one sheet at a time in the tray and submerge it completely. You will see tiny little bubbles form on the surface. These bubbles are evidence of the buffering agents being neutralized and releasing carbon dioxide gas. This is not an environmental problem at all. One small bowl of salsa and some Cuban black beans will likely stimulate more carbon dioxide release than neutralizing 20 sheets of Rives.Wow. Why did I write that?Anyway.Keep adding paper until the top sheet won’t stay submerged. Keep an eye on the clock, and after 5 minutes are up, take the first sheet off of the bottom and hang it up to dry. Do this with the other sheets after they have all been soaking for five minutes. As you might guess, this is not the most intellectually stimulating task that you will undertake in the darkroom, so it is an excellent idea to do as many sheets at one time as your drying area can handle. Then store the sheets for quick and easy printing over the following weeks.

Coat the paper

Once the paper is dry, you can coat and print. But Rives has some peculiar properties that call for some slight tweaks in normal platinum-palladium printing practices.The first deviation is in the coating and drying of the senstizer and metal. It is very absorbent paper, which means that it acts like a sponge in absorbing the costly ferric oxalate and metal compounds. The first modification is in ‘extending’ the sensitizer volume slightly with distilled water. I extend it about 25%. What this means is that if my total drop count is 10 drops of ferric oxalate and 10 drops of palladium, I will add an additional 5 drops of distilled water to give me more solution volume. This buys me additional time to use the magic brush to ‘work’ the solution into the paper in an even coating. (As an aside, the magic brush refers to the Richeson 9010 brush, the best brush for alt process work that I have yet found. Buy one and life will be good. We will try to publish a short article on the brush later on.)

Dry the paper

Now, allow the coating to dry for one minute. Yes, that is sixty seconds. Then dry it with a hairdryer set to medium heat, working the airflow back and forth in an even pattern until the coating is dry.

Rehumidify the paper

The next tweak to the process involves waiting. What is needed to get a nice rich print with a lot of Dmax is humidity in the paper while it is being exposed. And you have just driven all the humidity from the paper with the blow dryer. So put the paper in a dark place and let it rehumidify for 15-20 minutes or so. My darkroom is climate controlled, and I try to maintain about a 40-50% relative humidity as an ambient level. This amount of humidity is sufficient to yield a nice rich print. If you live in an arid area, an investment in a humidification box would be worthwhile to enable you to rehumidify the paper to somewhere between 40 and 60%.(As an aside, I always wondered why my prints were always warmer toned when I printed them in the winter versus the summer. I finally realized that it was the change in the ambient humidity. In the winter, my darkroom will sometimes be in the 30% range versus 45-50% in the summer. This difference in humidity will affect both the print color and the contrast to some extent. Being able to control your humidity is an excellent way to add some additional controls to your printing bag of tricks.)

Expose the print

Moving on, your print has now been coated, dried and rehumidified. So now it is time to expose it. If your print requires a long exposure and you are using a vacuum frame, a piece of mylar should be put between the vacuum blanket and the back of the print. There is nothing like a vacuum to suck all the moisture out of a print, and the mylar will allow you to maintain the desired humidity level in the print.

Develop the print

I use potassium oxalate developer at 120 to 140 degrees to develop my straight platinum/palladium prints. If I intend to use it for a gumover print, I will use the developer at 105 degrees. In general, the warmer the developer, the warmer tone your final print will have. A warmer developer will also increase the printing speed and lower the contrast, which is an oblique way of saying that you should make your test strips using the same developer temperature you intend to use for your final print. Now here is the first tweak from what some people regard as normal practice: Leave the print in the developer and agitate gently for five minutes. I know that it looks like it develops instantly and that the developer could immediately be poured back into its container, but the additional soak in the developer will enhance the subsequent clearing of the print.

Clear the print

BFK is a very absorbent paper. Which means that it does not let go of the unused ferric oxalate sensitizer without a fight. So do not make your life difficult by soaking the print in plain water at this point. Splurge on a ten pound canister of citric acid from http://www.chemistrystore.com , and soak the print for five minutes in a tray filled with 2 heaping tablespoons of citric acid per liter of water.Next, gently agitate the print for five minutes in each of two subsequent trays containing a solution of Kodak Hypoclear (or its homemade equivalent) diluted 1:3 (instead of the standard 1:4 dilution) with 1 tablespoon of EDTA tetrasodium per liter added as an additional aid to clearing. When tray number two starts looking lemonade yellow, dump it and move tray number three into its place and mix up a fresh batch of hypoclear/EDTA for the new tray number three.Just as it is important to clear adequately, it is also important to not clear too much, since the print can begin bleaching and losing density if it is allowed to languish in a bath of hypoclear too long. In other words, use the timer, and keep an eye on the total amount of time the print spends in the clearing bath.

Wash the print

Unlike their silver gelatin cousins, platinum prints do not need extensive washing to become stable. Once the unused ferric oxalate has been removed by the clearing baths, the only goal of washing the print is to remove the chemical residue of the clearing baths. I generally wash the prints for twenty minutes and then hang them to dry.

Summary

I want to point out that Rives BFK represents an interesting case when it comes to platinum printing. When I approached this paper using the same procedural methods I had been using for COT320 (for instance) my prints were underwhelming. But slight modifications and adjustments of the procedures to account for the absorbent nature of this paper have given me a fantastic, inexpensive option for platinum printing. That is not a bad thing, in my opinion. –Clay Harmon 

Okay, tonight is a brief find for the whole-plate fanboys : The 8-ply pre-cut Light Impressions mat. 8-ply just looks so… New York gallery-esque. 8 ply matboard is amazingly hard to cut, and that very difficulty is probably what makes it the object of desire for so many of the black-clad chardonnay-sipping ‘I’m hip and I know it’ crowd. But take at look at the window dimensions for this little jewel : 7-1/2 x 9/1/2!!!Which means that your delicious little whole plate platinum print will nestle in this 11×14 mat board and leave a luxurious 1/2-3/4 inch border around the image. This will allow you to show off the fine art paper you printed it on in the first place as a surround to the image.The only thing this will require is for you to mask the negative with some rubylith while printing if you want a virginal white band surrounding the image. This will let the viewer know that you, the photographer, are in charge of your image, not some stoned teenage kid at Michaels who thinks he knows how your image needs to be cropped. I also heard a great line from Mark Citret one time about the practice of leaving a revealed border around the image when it is matted. He said that it gives the viewer ‘a sense of visual completion’. That would sound like bullshit if it weren’t true.But it is.Of course, if you like sloppy black brush marked borders, you can just display those just as easily with this perfectly sized reveal. Oh, and Michael’s is looking for some more help in the framing department. Clay 

I’ve been spending a lot of time over the last few weekends rationalizing all my camera stuff. It is both amazing and somewhat embarrassing how much stuff you can accumulate over a decade. I have really begun to pare down the gear pile into the stuff I really use, and the whole plate format is one of those things that I really do keep grabbing on my way out the door. As I was photographing stuff to sell on ebay and other online sales outlets, I thought I would take the opportunity to snap a picture of the first whole plate camera that I owned that was built for the format.  This is the venerable Kodak 2D. This camera is not fancy in the modern sense of having a plethora of usually un-needed movements, but is extremely functional and practical for most picture taking activities. And the big benefit to this camera is that they can still be found relatively cheap. I picked this up off of ebay for $125. It needed some replacement bellows, and that was about it. I cleaned it up, polished the metal a little, and voila, an 85 year old camera sees some more action. Slap this nice 11 inch protar on it, and you have can still make some fantastic images with it. I’ll be adding some more information about this particular camera in the weeks ahead, but for now, here is a nice picture of what this thing looks like with a little wax and new bellows on it. 

The Kodak 2D

 

Look around for one of these. They are still quite a nice user camera. 

Clay 

 

 

I’ve been completely occupied this weekend doing two very different things. The first was tidying up my web page and trying to make sure it works on as many flavors of computers and browsers as possible. Being a relative novice at this whole black art of web design, I had no clue as to the issues I would be getting into: CSS, XHTML, the fact that browser makers don’t all agree on how how the same piece of code ought to display – Argghhhh!!!!!!. But by Sunday morning, after a lot of headscratching, I was finally ready to declare a truce and at least give my site a provisional ‘It’ll do for now’ status.

 

Thinking to myself that I really needed a break from all this ‘techie’ stuff, I dove into the darkroom Sunday afternoon to knock out some platinum prints on a new paper I’ve recently received. Assuming that coating and exposure would be similar to my old standby papers, I just coated a big piece of paper and made my first print. Whoa. Too dark. My assumptions proved to be unwarranted, it seems. So I backed up and systematically determined that either because of the paper or the fresh batch of ferric oxalate I had just mixed the day before, that my exposure times were about 1/2 a stop faster.  I then began getting some acceptable prints. My utopian vision of getting a little ‘analog’ respite by doing some old fashioned darkroom work did not turn out quite like I planned.

 

And what is the common thread between these two activities? Merely that in any technical activity, skepticism and flexibility are useful behaviors. And when things don’t turn out the way you expect, you need to have a systematic plan to determine the cause, make changes and evaluate the results. And have fun doing it.

Clay 

---

---

 So what is the big deal about this format, you may ask? Isn’t 8×10 perfectly fine? Well let me lead you through a couple of considerations that went through my mind as I gradually became enamored with this camera format.Yes, 8×10 is perfectly fine. But put an 8×10 contact print on an 11×14 mat board. Looks a little crowded to my eye. Now trim 1½ inches from each side and put it on the same mat board. Ahhh. Roomy, elegant.Next, divide 10 by 8. Your answer should be 1.25. Now divide 8.5 by 6.5. This answer is 1.308. It is just slightly more rectangular, and again, to my eye, this is a good thing. I learned photography with a 35mm camera and 2¼ x 2¼ Yashicamat. So I visualize either in a real rectangle or a real square. 8 x 10 is stuck in a compromise ratio that just doesn’t race my motor. Of course, your opinion may be wildly different than mine.Now, take a 5×7 print and tack it to a wall and step away about 10 feet. It just sort of disappears into the wall. Do the same thing with a 6½ x 8½ print. Still commands your attention, doesn’t it? I jokingly call this my ideal bathroom wall format. It is large enough to be independent, but small enough to look fine right across from your throne. Unless you are some sort of gazillionaire with a 3000 square foot bathroom, you just can’t put a Jeff Wall backlit transparency or a 4 x 4 foot Avedon in the bathroom. But the whole plate format displays nicely in both small and large spaces.What else does this format offer? Well, one thing is that it can serve as a do-it-all camera format. Sell your 5×7 and your 8×10 and keep this format. The cameras themselves tend to be quite a bit lighter than an 8×10 Deardorff, for instance, and not much heavier than most 5×7’s. In fact, my whole plate Ebony is lighter than a 5×7 Linhof Technika. (This is sort of damning with faint praise, as those of you who have ever owned a 5×7 Technika probably realize.)Finally, whole plate is one of the smallest formats that can be composed on the ground glass while simultaneously seeing the composition in its final form as a contact print . This is a subtle thing. But I can pull back from the image on the ground glass and visualize the relationships of different parts of the composition as they will appear in the final print. Almost any smaller format requires the mental leap and acceptance that the small image seen by the eye will eventually be enlarged. With contact printing, there is a one-to-one relationship between the ground glass image and the final print. (Other than being right side up and flipped!)

---

---

 Clay 

The nominal now-agreed-upon proper dimensions of the whole plate format is 6½ x 8½ inches. But Alan Greene in his book ‘Primitive Photography‘ references Désiré van Monckhoven’s 1863 book, Traité général de photographie, which outlines two plate size standards. Not surprisingly, one was English, the other French: 

Plate Size	English Format	French Format
Quarter-plate	3¼” x 4¼”	3¾” x 5″
Half-plate	4¾” x 6½”	5 3⁄8″ x 7 1⁄8″
Whole-plate	6½” x 8½”	7 1⁄8″ x 9 7/16″

 

 In the end, it is clear that the English format became the accepted format. Trying to special order a few boxes of 7 1/8″ x 9 7/16″ FP-4 might test even Ilford’s current goodwill toward the large format photography community.

Welcome to the whole plate camera blog-er-whatever. This will be a place where information will appear on an occasional basis dealing with whole plate format cameras. This old format, nominally a rectangle of 6-1/2 inches by 8-1/2 inches, was long thought dead. Many think it only refers to cameras that take old wet or dry glass plates. But this format actually continued to flourish well into the age of film. It began to lose popularity in the US about the same time that the flappers starting getting a little long in the tooth. But with the resurgence of interest in alternative processes, this format has been resurrected by a few oddball iconoclasts who recognize that it represents the perfect ‘Goldilocks’ view camera format: not too small to see the groundglass and not too large to hump over a mountain. It makes a wonderful contact print, yet is still small enough to fit in commonly available enlargers (and now film scanners). The lenses are not the size of sealed beam car headlamps, and many lenses that are used on either 5×7 cameras or 8×10 cameras are perfect matches. I intend to post an occasional photo, and occasional technique or equipment thread, and any lyrical odes to the format that get sent to me. This will not be a read-it-every-day blog, but it might be worth checking out once a month. Hope you find the information useful.

---

---

The Ebony whole-plate camera

As far as I know, there are two of these in existence. Producing products both beautiful and functional, Ebony Camera Ltd, make some of the nicest cameras in the world.