Uploaded February 2020 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
Last week I had the opportunity to catch up and shoot with a photographer friend of mine, Mr. James Smith. James runs Tall James Photography in Troy, OH specializing in wedding and portrait work. And over the last couple of years, he's been hitting the wet plate collodion process, hard.
Wet plates, or tintypes, are hand-coated emulsions that are sensitized, shot, and developed, all while the plate (which can either be aluminum or glass) are still wet; like, dripping wet. Since wet plates are pretty insensitive to light, I was able to film the entire process from coating to varnishing underneath a safelight.
James is using his trusty Burke & James 8x10 view camera with a massive Kodak 305mm Anastigmat, f/4.5. This is a pretty “fast” lens in the world of 8x10 photography, roughly equivalent to using a 50mm lens that opens up to f/1! Even with all that light coming into the camera, there still needs to be a ton of light, hence all those strobes. Unless we wanted to take the show out into the sunlight, we need at least 6,000 watt seconds to make a portrait happen.
I ended up sitting for two plates, the first which makes me look a little bit like a convicted criminal. After seeing that mug shot emerge in the fixer tray, we decided maybe we needed to change up the lighting a little bit. James took the softbox off of the back light and replaced it with a hard reflector, giving the left side of the second portrait a nice rim of light on my face and ridiculous hair.
Tall James Photography: talljamesphotography.com
on IG: instagram.com/Talljamesphotography_analog
Shot on Fujifilm X-Pro 3 with 23mm f/2 lens
Video short by Mat Marrash:
matmarrash.com
Last week I had the opportunity to catch up and shoot with a photographer friend of mine, Mr. James Smith. James runs Tall James Photography in Troy, OH specializing in wedding and portrait work. And over the last couple of years, he's been hitting the wet plate collodion process, hard.
Wet plates, or tintypes, are hand-coated emulsions that are sensitized, shot, and developed, all while the plate (which can either be aluminum or glass) are still wet; like, dripping wet. Since wet plates are pretty insensitive to light, I was able to film the entire process from coating to varnishing underneath a safelight.
James is using his trusty Burke & James 8x10 view camera with a massive Kodak 305mm Anastigmat, f/4.5. This is a pretty “fast” lens in the world of 8x10 photography, roughly equivalent to using a 50mm lens that opens up to f/1! Even with all that light coming into the camera, there still needs to be a ton of light, hence all those strobes. Unless we wanted to take the show out into the sunlight, we need at least 6,000 watt seconds to make a portrait happen.
I ended up sitting for two plates, the first which makes me look a little bit like a convicted criminal. After seeing that mug shot emerge in the fixer tray, we decided maybe we needed to change up the lighting a little bit. James took the softbox off of the back light and replaced it with a hard reflector, giving the left side of the second portrait a nice rim of light on my face and ridiculous hair.
Tall James Photography: talljamesphotography.com
on IG: instagram.com/Talljamesphotography_analog
Shot on Fujifilm X-Pro 3 with 23mm f/2 lens
Video short by Mat Marrash:
matmarrash.com
