I believe the fogging I have been experiencing the last 2 years, is a direct result of too much red light coming through my red painted roof vent. I also had fogging from the holder (now taped up). It was a confusing problem to fix, so multi faceted. The part that was very confusing to figure, was that the vent produced a nice and safe light to work in most days. So everything seemed fine, you could make great plates and then the light would get a bit brighter outside, and destroy everything inside, it was hard to notice why.
I think I was also overthinking things. When you learn wet plate people are constantly warning you of the countless ways you can screw up, they say over and over again how difficult wet plate is. You start to panic when things go wrong because of all the things people have told you that can go wrong! When I started to have fogging problems, I was thinking in a thousand different directions. I was thinking it was a wet plate issue of some kind. In the end it was a basic traditional darkroom film issue, a darkroom that is not light tight fogs film! With these glass plates the fogging seemed to occur when I was developing the image, and when the developer was on the plate. 10 seconds, looking good, 18-20 seconds looks about right then at 25 seconds everything fogged. You could barely see it in the red light, but eventually I did. Will work on a permanent fix for the vent this week (last week I just taped some black garbage bags under the vent).
I hope this problem is solved. Next week off when I go to the mountains to continue the project work, I hope to do me up some ULF panoramic' s for the first time, 12x20 inch ambrotype!!
