Old Glass Photograph

Recreates 19th-century wet plate collodion photography as an in-world process. Set up a Wet Plate Camera - it stands two blocks tall on its stand, putting the lens at about eye level - aim it at a scene, and everything from there runs through blocks and items. Nothing in the loop opens a menu or an inventory screen.

The process

• Coat a glass plate in a Darkroom Table. Open the lid, put the plate in, then close the lid while holding a Collodion Kit — four seconds later the plate is wet and sensitized. The dark place is the box itself, so the room around it can be as bright as you like.
• A coated plate lasts 60 seconds. After that the collodion dries and the plate goes back to plain glass, so loading and shooting both have to happen inside that minute. If the exposure would outlast it, the shutter doesn't open at all — you get told instead of losing the shot.
• Load the plate and right-click the camera to look through it. You have to be standing close behind it; from the front or the side it won't let you in. Frame the shot, then click again and the shutter opens. Exposure builds up as light times time and finishes on its own once it reaches the target — your view snaps back the moment it's done, so that's your cue. In open midday light that takes about 4 seconds. Anywhere dimmer takes longer. A beat marks off each second while the shutter is open.
• Anything moving during the exposure comes out as a faint smear or disappears entirely. Anything holding still comes out solid.
• Looking through the camera costs nothing and tells you in one line how the light looks: bright, soft, dim, or too dark to fill the plate. No numbers on screen. Sneak or walk to step back out without taking the shot; click during the exposure to close the shutter early and get an underexposed plate on purpose.
• Develop the exposed plate back in the Darkroom Table — plate in, lid closed while holding Developer, another four seconds. Leave the lid open while the box is working and light gets to the plate.
• Fix it in your hands. Hold the developed plate in one hand and Fixer in the other, then hold right-click for six seconds while the plate is shaken in the bath. That's where the photograph comes out.

What comes out

A black-and-white photograph, 128×128. It carries the name of whoever took it, which day of the world it was, and the real-world date and time it was developed. Frame it in an item frame and it stays there through a dedicated server restart — the image is saved with the world, not the session. Hold one up and right-click to look at it properly; you can keep walking while you do.

What doesn't go wrong

• Close the shutter the instant it opens and nothing was exposed. The exposure is cancelled and the plate isn't spent.
• A plate that already holds an image blocks the camera from starting a new exposure, so you can't overwrite a photo by mistake.
• A spot that's too dark (light level 7 or below) won't reach a full exposure even at the 12-second cap — you get an underexposed plate, not a ruined one.
• Opening the darkroom lid while the box is working costs you neither the plate nor the image. The light that gets in settles as fog and comes out as heavier marks on the finished photograph, which is also how you age one on purpose.
• A plate that dries out goes back to plain glass — you lose the chemical you poured, not the glass. Rinsing a plate in a water cauldron does the same at any stage, and it's the only way to give up on a developed plate without spending Fixer.

Eight advancements follow the process, three of them for the ways it goes wrong.

Compatibility

NeoForge, Minecraft 26.2. Shaders are supported — a plate records the scene the way you see it, so shader lighting and water reflections end up on the photograph.

Made for ModJam 2026 (Echoes of the Past).

Source: https://github.com/KURONAMI333/old-glass-photograph

Free to use in any modpack, public or private.