Dag Diary

• Glass by the pound
  February 26, 2012 | 10:38 am

  Found an unidentified large lens on eBay for about $9 per pound. The glass appears flawless and it seems to have a focal length of around 12″ and an exit diameter of about 3.5″ making it in the neighborhood of f 3.4 crudely calculated. Might work for 8×10 based its apparent coverage circle (once I [...]

• Shutters & etc.
  January 15, 2012 | 12:16 pm

  Continuing my progress on preparing to do 4×5 daguerreotypes. The camera currently only has a “hat shutter” so I have been looking at available shutters for my large lens – the only new one available seems to be the Packard shutter. This item, still made by the son of the creator is available for $850 [...]

• Daguerreotype Announcement?
  January 6, 2012 | 6:21 am

  I was going to write a short post about today being the anniversary of the first announcement of the daguerreotype, but a half hour of research revealed that the real story is more complicated – announcement today – perhaps first printed tomorrow, possibly unpublished circulars from earlier dates, first english language announcement, etc., etc., etc. So [...]

• Plastics Testing – Happy New Year!
  January 1, 2012 | 6:23 pm

  Did some testing of liquid bromine on various kinds of plastics today. Only PTFE was non-reactive as far as I could tell. Have plastic samples now sitting in a container with iodine crystals.

• Rubylith
  December 30, 2011 | 7:47 am

  Was doing some research on Rubylith and added a very short article about it to the CDags Wiki. I need to find more people to help add articles to the wiki, it is still pretty threadbare…

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