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| Ilford Special Lantern Plate |
Having made four
pinhole cameras for last year's
Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day, it was simple enough to use these again for this year's event on 26th April. I had made the cameras to use glass lantern plates in two different sizes, 8.2x8.2cm and two-inch square plates. Unlike last year, where I had an encounter with security staff in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, this year I just shot the plates at home and while working on my allotment.
For the small cameras, I used Ilford Special Lantern plates, the fastest lantern plates that Ilford manufactured, and the plates that I used were of 'soft' contrast grade; I've used these plates fairly often before, and not just with pinhole photography. The box that the plates I used for this year's Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day had a leaflet inside the box dated to 1966, and in common with other boxes of Special Lantern plates, the emulsion has lasted well. However, I did have problems with fogging, possibly a light leak as this shows up in the bottom right corner in most of these plates.
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| Ilford Special Lantern Plate |
One feature of the emulsion used for lantern plates is that it is 'ordinary' or blue sensitive. In the still life photograph above, the yellow of the lemons is rendered as dark, if not darker, to their green leaves (this plate was also underexposed). For most of the pinhole photographs taken with the lantern plates, this has little directly observable difference from panchromatic emulsions, but with a high-key local colour, such as with the lemons, it is striking in comparison.
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| Ilford Special Lantern Plate |
For the larger cameras, I used Kodak L5 Warm Tone plates, having used all my Ilford plates in the 8.2cm size. I'd shot a
test plate from the box last year, so I anticipated the results. The Kodak emulsion has suffered more from age in comparison to the Ilford plates, and appears higher in contrast. The plates were all tray developed by inspection under a red safelight in RO9 One Shot, diluted 1:120.
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| Kodak L5 Warm Tone Lantern Plate |
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| Kodak L5 Warm Tone Lantern Plate |
See the whole set of photographs here.
Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day website.
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