Thread: Ultra large format camera

Hi all

I attended the opening of the Collodion Spirit exhibition at the Gold Street Studios gallery in East Trentham today. As part of the festivities, they had arranged for photographer Craig Tuffin to come down from Queensland.



Craig has built a 24" x 32" plate camera into the back of a Ford Transit van



The camera uses a 900mm lens mounted on a fully articulated 'standard' with blackout material around it.



Inside is another 'standard' where Craig can mount the plate. The 'plate' in this case is a 24" x 32" piece of flat roofing iron that has been power-coated black on one side. The iron is then coated with collodion (cellulose dissolved in ether and alcohol and mixed with iodine salts). The plate is then made light sensitive by dunking it into a silver nitrate bath (black thing on left) to make the salts light sensitive. It takes 4mins in Vic temperatures to sensitise it properly.





One of the issues having the lens mounted on the back of the van is that doesn't come with a lens hood. Craig gets by with a little help from his friends.





The collodion has to be poured evenly over the plate. With a plate this size, it can be very tricky and a percentage of the success is luck dependent.





All set to shoot. It's not a quick process. When Craig posed his subject, the sun was out. By the time everything was ready to go, it was 30mins later and the sun had been replaced by light rain. The final exposure was 13secs at F11.




The developing of the plate has to be done in the dark but can be done under safe light as the treated collodion is only blue and UV sensitive. Craig has a converted food caravan set up as a full darkroom that follows the van around for this purpose.

Once the plate has been developed, the fixing can be done in daylight.



Here's what the resultant image looks like. The shot is a positive because the iron sheet is back so the metallic silver comes up white.



One happy photographer!

Excellent piece. Thanks for that, most interesting.