What is wet plate collodion?

Wet plate collodion is one of the earliest photographic techniques, dating back to the 1850s - Also the first commercialised process that allowed for detailed negatives on a transparent substrate. A step above the very textural Calotype by Fox Talbot.

It involves meticulously cleaning the glass or glossy black metal, flowing a salted collodion over the plate and sensitising it in a bath of charged silver nitrate. Shooting the plate and developing it while it is still wet - hence the name.

It is a very unique and hand made photographic process with sometimes unpredictable results.

  • As the name suggests, the plate has to be wet to take an image so it is fairly instantaneous, it is kind of like a Victorian Polaroid.

    The plate is egged, flowed and sensitised within 5 minutes, 3 minutes in the sensitising bath and has to be developed within a few minutes of being sensitised.

  • Please have a look at the image with the creepy clown with the Datacolor card.

    Due to the extreme orthochromatic nature of this process, it is completely blind to reds, oranges and yellows. So please avoid more pigmented makeup in these colours. As for clothes, if you would like a more striking plate, patterned or textured print works well.

  • It is very unlikely, due to the handmade nature there is likely going to be small imperfections, marks, artefacts, slight movement etc on the plate.

  • For a few minutes before the plate is sensitised to make sure you are in the rough place for when the photo is taken.

    When the picture is being taken it mostly depends on the light. On a good bright day it can be as little as one second but in the shade up to 5-10 seconds. I use a neck brace so it limits movement and the image isn’t affected.

    While using flash the image is instantaneous as you are blasted with over 2000w of light.

  • The last step in making a wet plate collodion plate is to seal the image. This can be done in a handful of ways once it is dry. The most historically accurate being shellac varnish being flowed over the image and heated.

    Most likely this will be done in my darkroom but can be done on location with smaller plates.

  • If you blink or move around before the photo is taken and the photo is out of focus. There is a big blob of dust or some chemical issue obscuring important parts of the plate - I am happy to take another plate to replace it for the price of the substrate used.

  • The biggest limiting factor with wet plate is light. It is very insensitive in comparison to more modern mediums. It requires good quality bright light as it is more sensitive to the blue and UV side of the spectrum. Natural light is the best, but also hard to come by in the UK. I have a suitcase and pop up darkroom I can take on location so as long as there is some flat ground I can set up.

    I do have some powerful flash units but they do require mains power and are limited to groups of 2 or maybe 3.

Example of how wet plate collodion reacts with different colours