I’ve been meaning to post a wee pic of my new camera for a while – and I thought it would be an interesting way to answer John Feeney’s question.

It’s a bootiful 11×14″ wet plate camera made from Walnut – photographed, of course, with an iPhone John 🙂

I’ve put a 35mm film camera on-top just to give a sense of scale – I did try to get one of the boys to stand in but they’re way to busy being secret agents today.

The plate I used on FB was actually made a few years ago. I scanned the plate and have had a massive print made which is currently part of a travelling exhibition curated by The Compass Gallery. I think it was about 3 metres wide – really amazing to see it reproduced to such a great scale. Collodion has no grain so instead of losing detail the large scale actually seems to make all the little hand-made characteristics of the plate and mood of the image more real.

I re-visited Elgol last year with the new camera and made this bigger plate onto 14×7″ black glass and really loved the richness of the blacks the glass gives you. It’s a lot more involved than using black metal as you’ve got to edge, polish and clean the glass first. You’ve then got to line the edge with albumen to prevent the collodion from peeling – but I think it’s worth the effort.

Can anyone spot any significant differences? 🙂

I can’t wait to get back up to the western isles next year to carry on with my Collodion Portrait of Scotland work.