How I Photograph My Wet Plate Collodion Tintypes

Although my fine art workflow is 100% analog, there is still a need to digitize my handmade analog collodion plates for my website and many other reasons.

If you have ever tried to photograph your super high gloss collodion aluminum plate (tintype), then you already know the reflections will drive you crazy.

The solution is pretty simple and straightforward.

I already owned a copy stand, so I used what I had. You don’t need anything fancy, just as long as it is stable and rated to work with your digital camera.

I use an older Olympus EM-1 micro-four-thirds camera with a macro lens. I have used this camera for many years to scan film and other related copy work. It has pixel-shift technology built into the camera that allows me to create an 80MP RAW file.

The 80MP is overkill for my purposes, but I use it in case I ever need a larger file. When I save the JPG files for the website, I simply down-sample them to smaller files. More modern cameras with pixel-shift technology can produce 400MP files and are even bigger now.

As you can see in the photo above, the setup is very simple. I use two continuous LED daylight lights pointed at 45-degree angles down on the plate. My Olympus EM-1 is mounted on the center column above. I enabled a two-second delay after pressing the shutter button to allow a little time for everything to settle before the camera does it multi-exposure sequence to create the 80MP high-resolution file.

I also turn off all overhead lights in the room and only have the copy stand lights active when I am making the exposures.

I found F/8 to be the optimum aperture for my lens, so this is what I use. After the initial setup is completed, it is a very fast process to digitize each plate.

I simply import the RAW file into Photoshop, make a few basic adjustments, and create a smaller JPG file for my website.

I photographed my first three plates and got them uploaded to my online gallery.