I took the Bausch & Lomb Tessar out today and made a collodion dry plate negative. It’s absolutely beautiful. It was made February 24, 1903. It’s an 8” x 10” lens (12” x 10” when using smaller f/stops). It covers my Whole Plate (6.5” x 8.5”) wonderfully.
Two things l love about it; 1) it’s speed. It’s an f/4.5 lens. 2) The coverage. I wanted something that I can use for landscapes and easily cover the plate. This does that with room to spare. I love the speed, too. I made this negative at f/4.5 for a 6 minute exposure at 1000 hrs (morning). The sun was hidden behind some soft, wispy clouds - beautiful light. If you look close, you can see the rim light on the top of the trunk. The light is coming from the east and my camera was facing south.
Next on the agenda is to make a Platinum Palladium print and an Oil Print from this negative. Really exciting stuff for me. I absolutely love it!
Digital snap of the scene as the exposure was being made.
Digital snap inverted, unfortunately this gets compressed by some algorithm - The detail is spectacular! I’ll post the prints when I get them.