So my Southern California weather is not cooperating with my project! The last several months the weather here has been great: sunny skies with little cloud interference. Now that I'm starting to work on this series, our "June gloom" is setting in. In June we end up with a marine layer setting in most of the day, which leaves our days mostly overcast. This does not work well with my tintype project.
I find with the emulsion I'm using to coat my tins, the emulsion has been estimated at approximately ISO 50, which means it has a very low sensitivity to light and needs more light in order to expose an image correctly. I have to set my Holga to "B," which stands for "bulb," meaning that the shutter will stay open as long as I have the shutter release button depressed. Any faster shutter speed doesn't allow enough light into the camera to expose the tin. So my images also have to be taken while the camera is secured on a tripod to minimize movement.
So when I go to shoot any image -- landscape/portrait/whatever -- I have to estimate the amount of time I hold the shutter release button down. Too little time and the image turns out way underexposed; too much time and the image ends up way too light. This actually is the reverse from regular photography because of the nature of the emulsion.
But this is all new territory for me, and I'm enjoying the trial-and-error process that is necessary in order to make this work.
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