I am planning on using an Erneman quarter plate camera for hand held shots. I'll be starting emulsion production here later in the year. An AmBr type emulsion looks fine. I read with interest the comments about the use of ammonia to increase speed. It is unlikely that I can use ammonia because of the difficulty of installing fume removal facilities where work. If ammonia is not an option, are there other ways I can uplift effective speed? Steigmanns solution for example.

I'm currently using commercially available emulsions at about ISO 3, so I guess any improvement would be a bonus.

Hi Simon,

AmBr emulsion can go ISO 12 or higher, depending on the time of year, and latitude and elevation -- it's all about UV light. Steigmann's doesn't do a lot for a non-ammoniacal emulsion. I only tried once. It didn't come close to getting the camera off its tripod. A plain silver emulsion is so beautiful, it deserves to be itself. Since you won't be able to get it to hand-held speed and your quarter plate camera will likely have to be on a tripod anyway, celebrate a beautiful and simple emulsion, even if it's a tad slow .

One woman's opinion,
d

Hi Denise,
thanks for this. I'll have to research fume extraction!
It is going to be very useful to me to have a faster emulsion available as part of the toolkit.