Metal Halide Light Source for Wet Plate Collodion

The company I work for recently upgraded their warehouse light source from metal halide to LED. So I saved one of the (rather big and very heavy) units from the metal skip and salvaged all the spare 400W bulbs that were no longer required. I thought it might be a useful light source for certain wet plate collodion subjects – still life scenes in particular.

A few months ago I found the time to try it out with a few old bottles sitting on top of a wooden box. I used an old piece of red material as a backdrop.

It worked pretty well.

Some technical details:

Exposure time: 45s
Aperture: f/27
Lens: Schneider-Kreuznach Symmar-S 150mm f/5.6
Camera: Sinar Norma 5×4
Light source: 400W Metal Halide Single Bulb

Behind the scenes:

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