high nocturnal style's photostream

homemade tintype

homemade tintype

homemade tintype

parke county, indiana

So I'm PAINFULLY learning how to make tintypes in my bathroom. It's been mainly issue of coating the emulsion way thinner than I expected (the stuff looks a fried egg dried on the floor if you coat it too thick on the plate) and not letting the emulsion touch the dark slide in the 4x5 cut film holder - apparently not even if it's completely dry, because I'm getting weird gloopy streaks where the slide must have lain against the plate.

Blew through a ton of chemicals before I finally figured out the basics, and then melted a few great images by accident when I ran hot water instead of cold on them (the image will literally melt right off the tin plate if the water gets too hot.) Got a couple of frankly amazing images IF YOU LOOK AT THEM UNDER WATER, but the sticky marks from the dark slide ruin them once they've dried. I might figure out a way to display them in "water frames" if that's what it takes.... the tonality and resolution are incredible. Of course they'll look like total ass as JPEG's on the internet.

So far, so wonky... but compared to what I was making three days ago, this is actually progress.