A few days ago, for the first time ever in my experience with wet plate photography, I mixed up collodion from scratch. I thought I’d share about the experience.
First of all, plain USP (U.S. Pharmacopeia) Collodion is a mixture of ether, alcohol, and nitrocellulose (also known as nitrated or guncotton). It is the nitrocellulose that acts as a binder and carrier for photo-sensitive salts of silver while making wet collodion images.
The vast majority of the... more