Can someone help explain this video to me?

[www.youtube.com]

How can this guy take a tintype using a flash ?

It's at 6:00 minutes into the video

Way it looks,he takes it like a normal point and shoot camera.

Flash goes off and he's done.

I always thought there was at least a 3 second exposure time or more?

Carl



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2013 12:50PM by deltafour.

Well, I didn't watch all 15 minutes and actually did not get past the talking. But, I know a few guys who shoot just as you describe. Using a higher f-stop, you can literally leave the lenscap open and just pop a flash to give the needed light. Wattage and length of the "pop" along with f-stop needs to be figured out via experimentation. In a controlled studio setting, as long as you don't change any of those variables, then you can repeat that pop flash exposure any day, any time.

www.guillorycameras.com

I once saw someone's images done at night with various subjects in the frame spread throughout the "yard." The photographer took the lenscap off and walked around to each "subject" and poped the flash, then went and developed the plate.

Thank Ty.

I knew someone would know.

Sorry about that.

The part I was talking about is 6:00 minutes into the video

Carl

Given the sensitivity of wet plates, taking tintypes by electronic flash is relatively easy. Magnesium flash powder might be more period correct though.

Even Daguerreotypes, which are about 10 times less sensitive to light than wet plates, (about Iso 0.08), can be taken in less than 1/250 of a second with light from couple of 9600 watt second Speedoton flash heads and an f/2.8 lens.

[www.moderndags.com][/img]

This dag of my grandchildren Liam and Danny Boomker was easy once the boys got used to the intensity of the lights. All that was needed was the firm grip of their mother to keep the younger child from squirming too much.

This is a question for John. Speaking about sensitivity...I read your paper on daguerreotypes and increasing sensitivity. As an educated guess, would lining a wet plate camera with white material change the sensitivity of the plate?? Just curious.

I

Yes! It would work with wet plates as it does with any silver halide photographic process.
They all require multiple photon hits per silver halide molecule, usually 3, before they form an atom of reduced silver which in turn becomes the nucleus of the developed image. Variations of this technique were widely used by film photographers.

You can only gain about half a stop in speed with the white camera technique because the amount of supplementary light is proportional to the exposure. You can not increase one without increasing the other.

However, if you give the plate a separate flash of up to 30% of the main camera exposure, either before or after the main exposure, you can reduce the main camera exposure by 1 to 1.5 stops. Beware that you may already be doing some of this by slightly fogging your plates in your portable darkroom. The effects are cumulative and you will get fog if you push the pre-exposure too far.