2008 May | The Daguerreotype: Contemporary work by Jonathan Danforth

Exposure Guidelines Revisited

Posted in Artist's Journal by Jonathan on the May 31st, 2008

I’ve been experimenting with my recently acquired lens this week. Having a maximum aperture of f/5.6 I didn’t expect that the Schneider Super Symmar XL 150mm would be terribly much faster than my stalwart Ektar f/6.3. True, the new Schneider is only ^1/3 of a stop faster than the Ektar but today’s results belied that tiny fraction of a hole. Is a fraction of a hole still a hole? I smell a kōan in there somewhere.

My note’s from the exposure I tried today showed a sky at EV-15 ^2/3, and grass at EV-13^1/3 yet my exposure of one minute yielded overexposure. Curious. My instinct tells me that this has something to do with UV transmission. A cursory review of the technical data available from Schenider delivers a bewildering array of charts and graphs yet deeper examination yields some useful nuggets.

The transmittance diagram shows level response from ~480nm to ~640nm although to be fair, the transmittal range of the lens below 80% starts and ends at ~400nm and over 700nm respectively. My image today was predominantly battleship gray so color isn’t an issue but UV could be.

I’m still researching… more later.

no comments yet

Excellent Daguerreotype Sensitizing / Fuming Box!

Posted in Blogs n' Articles, Daguerreotypes by Jonathan on the May 22nd, 2008

Great pictures of a contemporary daguerreotypist’s iodine fuming box.

These images are over at a new blog called The Daguerreotypist by Andy.

no comments yet

Daguerreotype Preservation and Restoration

Posted in Blogs n' Articles, Daguerreotypes by Jonathan on the May 19th, 2008

Allow me to plug the following: Dennis Waters, Fine Daguerreotypes. The Waters family is well know in the daguerreotype community for scholarly research and restoration services. Just take a glance at their restoration page and you’ll be amazed; I am.

A friend of mine came to me recently with a family daguerreotype that was in poor shape. I contacted Casey Waters on her behalf for the restoration. Casey’s response was swift and professional. I expect fine results.

Daguerreotype restoration is tricky business; I want no part of it. I seal my own daguerreotypes and I have a basic understanding of what’s going on but I am also confident in my ability to replace a daguerreotype if I screw it up. Vintage daguerreotypes? No so.

The resealing process is simple enough… I’ve seen period examples enough times to know that replacing the glass on the daguerreotype plate package does a world of good for improving the appearance and legibility of the image. When it comes to fungus, deterioration, cookie crumbs, and other extraneous adulterants, however, there are more potentially damaging procedures (see here) to follow. It is these procedures that I’m not willing to practice. I encourage you to do the same especially on a vintage piece.