The first attempt at Zebra dry plate tintypes did not go well. The plates ranged from overexposed to underexposed, my safelight fogged the home tests, and I came away with mixed feelings about a product that I genuinely wanted to support.
This article is the second attempt. I went again with more plates, more discipline, and a determination to actually make this process work. Spoiler: I got one frame I genuinely like, but it took two more packs of plates to get there.
This article covers: what I changed second time round, what worked, what definitely did not work, and the more nuanced verdict on the Zebra dry plate process. If you came from the first attempt article, this is the resolution. If you have not read the first one, the short version is that these plates produce tintype-style images using a dry workflow, but require care and the right exposures.
What I changed
Three things, deliberately, between attempts.
The lens. First time I used my Emil Busch Aplanat, which is a beautiful lens but has no shutter (I was exposing with a card over the front). This time I used the Schneider Symmar 210mm, which has a proper repeatable shutter. If I was trying to find the right exposure, I needed to know that the exposure I had set was the exposure I had got. Trial and error only works when you can trust your variables.
The subjects. First time I shot my friend Marsha outdoors at a duck pond. This time I planned a series of more controllable scenes: my daughters in the garden, then myself in the garage studio with proper LED lighting. Indoors lets you control the light. Self-portraits let you experiment without exhausting other people’s patience.
The mindset. First time I had read Zebra’s exposure guidance and followed it semi-religiously. This time I went prepared to ignore the guidance and bracket exposures aggressively, because the published guidance had not worked the first time and I needed to find what actually worked, not what Nate had written down.
The girls’ shoot (a complete loss)
First session: my two daughters in the back garden. Cold and windy, October light, both girls sitting still as statues for the kind of exposures the plates wanted.
All four plates came out wildly underexposed. Barely visible images on the aluminium. I had followed the metered exposure (around half a second) plus Zebra’s published compensation for autumn UV, and somehow ended up far short of what the plates needed.
I will not try to extract a profound lesson from this. It was a failure. Probably the meter and the compensation guidance combined to give me an exposure that was simply too short, but I do not know for certain what went wrong. What I do know: the published exposure guidance did not get me a usable plate on a real October day with a real subject.
After four wasted plates, I called the daughters’ shoot off and moved to the garage studio.
The garage self-portrait shoot
Garage studio, two LED lights, me on a chair, Schneider 210mm on the Stenopeika, focused on a card I held in position where my head would go. Bulb cable release. Two plates.
The light meter said 1.3 seconds at ISO 2. I gave it 3 seconds for the first plate and 5 seconds for the second, on the theory that the indoor LED lights would have less UV than natural light and would therefore need longer exposures.
The 3-second plate: visible image but still overexposed. Looking at it on the plate, I could see what the process produces in the right ballpark, but the highlights were blown.
The 5-second plate: even more overexposed. Should have gone shorter, not longer.
So my theory about indoor LED needing longer exposures was wrong. The lights were putting out enough usable light to expose the plates at quite short timings, despite what Zebra’s guidance about indoor light had suggested.
Two plates, both overexposed but in the visible-image range. Progress, but not a keeper.
![PLACEHOLDER: the overexposed garage self-portraits from session two, showing the kind of result you get when you push exposure too long]
The breakthrough: shorter exposures than the guidance suggests
Third attempt, also self-portrait, also indoor LED setup. By this point I had used through most of my second pack of plates and I was determined to get one decent frame.
I switched lenses again, to the 8.5 inch Dallmeyer Aplanat at f/4.5. Faster aperture. Then I did the careful thing: with the dark slide out and the cable release ready, I would turn on the studio lights with one hand and squint at the camera, holding my head in the marked position from the focusing card. Three seconds. Lights off. Reload, develop.
First plate: still overexposed. But this time the image was lovely. Beautiful tonal range across my face, the texture I wanted from a tintype, just too much light overall. Definitely getting closer.
So I cut the exposure to 1.5 seconds. Same lens, same lighting, same pose.
Second plate: the keeper. Properly exposed face, recognisable tonal range, the tintype character I had been hoping for. Slight motion blur from my whole face being involved in the squint reaction to the lights, but the overall plate is genuinely lovely. The one I am keeping.
I tried a third plate at the same exposure to confirm and got something slightly worse with more side-to-side motion blur. Called it a night.
Total: 2.5 packs of plates used to get one keeper.
![PLACEHOLDER: the keeper plate, the 1.5-second self-portrait with the Dallmeyer Aplanat, showing the kind of result the Zebra dry plates produce when correctly exposed]
What this experience told me about the process
Several findings, of varying confidence.
Finding 1: the published exposure guidance is, in my experience, not reliable. I followed it the first time round and got overexposure. I followed it the second time and got underexposure on the girls’ shoot and overexposure on the garage shoot. Different shoots, different conditions, the guidance was wrong in different directions.
This is not necessarily Zebra’s fault. UV light is genuinely hard to compensate for, because it varies enormously with time of day, season, cloud cover, latitude, altitude, and the angle the sun is making. A single published compensation table cannot cover all conditions. But it does mean that you should not trust the guidance on your first attempt. Bracket aggressively until you know what works for your specific setup.
Finding 2: indoor LED lighting puts out usable amounts of UV. I had been told (and Zebra’s guidance reinforces this) that indoor light has insufficient UV for these plates. My garage LEDs proved this wrong: they exposed the plates effectively at 1.5 seconds. This opens up indoor studio shooting as a real option, which the first-attempt article said was probably impractical.
Finding 3: flash should work. If continuous LEDs work at 1.5 seconds, a single flash burst would also work to expose these plates, assuming the flash is powerful enough. I have not tried this yet but it is the obvious next experiment. This would solve the “models squinting at LED lights” problem and make the process viable for actual portrait work rather than self-portraits where you can tolerate the squint.
Finding 4: the latitude really is narrow. The successful 1.5-second plate has good tonal range, but only across a narrow range of scene brightnesses. The unsuccessful girls’ plates failed partly because the outdoor scene had too much dynamic range. Compositions for this process need to be deliberately flat-lit, with the subject in a single tonal range rather than against varied backgrounds.
Finding 5: the hue can shift toward blue-green if you push the chemistry. The underexposed girls’ plates showed a noticeable greenish-blue cast compared to the sepia-warmth of the successful self-portrait. Zebra’s instructions warn about this: too much thiocyanate produces this hue shift. I had not added significantly more thiocyanate than usual, so I suspect the shift was caused by cold developer plus extended development time rather than excessive chemistry. My theory: the thiocyanate and the developer respond differently to temperature, and when you extend development to compensate for cold chemistry, you may be effectively over-developing the thiocyanate component.
This is speculation, but worth flagging for anyone trying this in cold conditions.
![PLACEHOLDER: a comparison of the warm-toned successful plate next to the blue-green underexposed girls’ plate, showing the hue shift]
The plate I am keeping
The 1.5-second Dallmeyer self-portrait. The exposure is good. The tonal range across my face is the kind of thing I had hoped to see from this process. There is slight motion blur but it does not ruin the image. It looks like a tintype should look.
Would I put it on the wall? I am not sure. It is good enough that I am not going to throw it away. It is interesting enough that I am glad I made it. Whether it has the gravitas to actually hang on a wall is a different question, and possibly one I cannot answer until I have made better ones.
I have it in my plate box, and I am looking forward to comparing it to the wet plate collodion plates I am about to commission from Guy Bellingham. That should give me a proper basis for understanding how dry plate tintypes sit relative to the wet plate process they emulate.
On the published guidance question
This article has been honest that I struggled with Zebra’s published exposure guidance. I want to be careful here about what this means.
It does not mean Nate’s product is broken. It means the exposure variables for dry plate tintypes are inherently difficult to publish reliably, because UV light is so variable. Anyone doing this process is probably going to need to develop their own calibration for their own conditions, lights, and chemistry batches.
It also does not mean the process does not work. The keeper plate proves it works. It just means getting there requires more experimentation than the guidance suggests.
If Zebra wanted to improve the user experience, the thing that would help most would be a more comprehensive bracketing recommendation (“for your first plate, try the metered exposure, then bracket by full stops above and below across your remaining plates until you find what works”). That would lose the illusion of precision but gain the truth of how this process actually behaves.
Nate has mentioned that this is a new and evolving process. He recently published updated technical recommendations after I had finished my second attempt. This is genuinely a developing product, and the guidance is improving. Worth checking for current Zebra documentation if you are trying this now.
Name correction from the previous article
I have been calling Nate “Nedge” or “Nejc” in previous videos, based on a misreading of his name. It is pronounced like the English name “Nate.” Sorry, Nate. Now corrected.
The verdict, second time round
Better than the first time. Still mixed.
What is now clear:
- The process can produce genuinely lovely results
- Indoor lighting works, against what the guidance suggests
- Exposure requires aggressive bracketing on your first session
- Latitude is genuinely narrow and compositions need to be planned around it
- The plates are good fun to work with and the process is engaging
What is still uncertain:
- How the keeper plate compares to a wet plate done by an expert (the upcoming Bellingham article should answer this)
- Whether flash would work as I suspect it would
- Whether I would buy a third pack to keep going, or stop here
The second part of that last point is honest. At roughly £5 per plate and a 1-in-10 success rate so far, the economics are getting expensive. If I move to flash and can do less bracketing, the cost per keeper would come down significantly. If I cannot, this is an occasional-treat process rather than a regular practice.
I am going to try flash next. If that opens up the process properly, I will commit. If it does not, I may have to accept that wet plate is the better fit for this aesthetic, even though it requires the wet workflow I was trying to avoid.
Big thanks
To Nate at Zebra Dry Plates for innovating in a corner of the analogue world that desperately needs innovators. The product works when you work it out. The community needs more people like Nate trying things and putting products on the market.
To Samuele at Stenopeika for the Air Force 4x5 that has now been through more abuse than any large format camera should reasonably tolerate. Still purring along.
Try the plates yourself if any of this has been interesting. They are at Zebra Dry Plates, the chemistry is straightforward, and Nate’s Lost Light Art YouTube has detailed tutorials from someone who knows the process properly.
The Bellingham wet plate article is the next stop in this particular journey.