Albumen print
Photo History
Daguerrotype
On 7 January 1839 Louis Jacques Daguerre
announced to the French Academy of Sciences,
his invention.
Louis Jacques Mande DAGUERRE (1787-1851) The
daguerreotype process was the first practicable
method of obtaining permanent images with a camera.
The man who gave his name to the process and
perfected the method of producing direct positive
images on a silver-coated copper plate was Louis
Jacques Mande Daguerre, a French artist and scenic
painter. Daguerre had began experimenting with ways
of fixing the images formed by the camera obscura
around 1824, but in 1829 he entered into partnership
with Joseph Nicephore Niepce (1765-1833), a French
amateur scientist and inventor who, in 1826, had
succeeded in securing a picture of the view from his
window by using a camera obscura and a pewter plate
coated with bitumen. Niepce called his picture-making
process heliography ("sun drawing"), but although he
had managed to produce a permanent image using a
camera, the exposure time was around 8 hours. Niepce
later abandoned pewter plates in favor of silver-plated
sheets of copper and discovered that the vapor from
iodine reacted with the silver coating to produce silver
iodide, a light sensitive compound.
Boulevard du Temple, Paris,
Spring 1838, by Daguerre
(includes the earliest reliably
dated photograph of a person).
The image shows a busy street,
but because the exposure time
was at least ten minutes the
moving traffic cannot be seen.
However, two men at lower left,
one apparently having his
boots polished and the other
the bootblack, remained
motionless enough to be
distinctly visible. The image is
reversed (as were most
Daguerreotypes) as is
evidenced by the signage on a
building in upper left.
Daguerreotype camera built by
La Maison Susse Frères in 1839,
with a lens by Charles Chevalier.
In 1848, Charles Fontayne and William Porter produced one of the most famous photographs in the
history of the medium — a panorama spanning some 2 miles of Cincinnati waterfront. They did it
with eight 6.5- by 8.5-inch daguerreotype plates, a then-new technology that in skilled hands
displays mind-blowing resolution.
Fontayne and Porter were definitely skilled, but no one knew just how amazing their images were
until three years ago, when conservators at George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, began
restoration work on the deteriorating plates. Magnifying glasses didn’t exhaust their detail; neither
did an ultrasharp macro lens. Finally, the conservators deployed a stero microscope. What they saw
astonished them: The details — down to window curtains and wheel spokes — remained crisp even
at 30X magnification. The panorama could be blown up to 170 by 20 feet without losing clarity; a
digicam would have to record 140,000 megapixels per shot to match that. Under the microscope, the
plates revealed a vanished world, the earliest known record of an urbanizing America.
But the conservators also found trouble. At that magnification, dust motes smaller than red blood
cells became image-obscuring blobs. Corrosion from a few molecules of water obscured a face
peeking out a window. Even polishing marks from the original preparation of the plates became a
mass of dark streaks.
Trying to restore the plates themselves might have damaged the images, and the conservators didn’t
want to risk ruining the finest American daguerreotypes in existence. So they put them in a case
filled with inert argon gas to arrest the deterioration and went digital, turning to computer vision
specialists at the University of Rochester. To them, the images were just noisy data, which they knew
how to scrub.
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/07/ff_daguerrotype_panorama/
• The daguerreotype was made on a
highly polished surface of silver that
was plated on a copper sheet.
• It was sensitized by being placed
(silver side down) over a container
of iodine crystals inside a box. Rising
vapor reacted with the silver,
producing the light-sensitive
compound silver iodide.
• During exposure, the plate
recorded a latent image (a chemical
change had taken place, but no
evidence of it was visible.)
• To develop the image the plate
was placed, silver side down, in
another box containing a dish of
heated mercury at the bottom.
• Vapor from the mercury reacted
with the exposed areas of the plate.
Where ever light had struck the plate,
mercury formed a frostlike amalgam
with the silver.
• This amalgam made up the bright
areas of the image.
• Where no light had struck, no
amalgam was formed; the unchanged
silver iodide was dissolved in sodium
thiosulfate fixer, leaving the bare
metal plate, which looked black, to
form the dark areas of the picture.
How long were the average exposures for these
images?
• 1839 Daguerreotype half-plate & whole plate
15-30 minutes
• 1841 Daguerreotype ninth-plate & sixth- plate
20 sec - 90 seconds
• 1842 Daguerreotype ninth-plate & sixth- plate
10 sec - 60 seconds
Robert Louis Stevenson
List three attributes of the
Daguerreotype.
• Fidelity of the image (fine
details).
• Can last forever if
properly cared for
• Excellent for portraits
List three disadvantages of
the Daguerreotype.
• Difficulty in viewing – had
to be held at certain angles.
• Mercury vapor highly
poisonous
• Plate (image) was unique
– no negative for
reproduction.
Calotype
Who invented the
Calotype?
• Henry Fox Talbot
Where and when was it
invented?
•Lacock Abby, England, 25
January 1839; three weeks
after Daguerre
Henry Fox Talbot
Lacock Abbey, first window shot
(below) from the inside looking out
and today, from the outside.
Harry Potter’s
school.
Lacock Abbey
was used for
the Hogwarts
school in the
Harry Potter
movies.
What was the process?
Negative paper/sensitized for the
camera/development and print:
• The first stage in producing the negative paper
was to iodize the paper. This was done by brushing
silver-nitrate solution onto one side of a sheet of
fine quality writing paper and drying it. Then in the
dark, the paper was immersed in a potassium
iodide solution and left to dry in the sunlight.
• The second stage was to sensitize the paper for the
camera. The paper was coated with silver-nitrate
and gallic acid, thus making it light-sensitive. It was
left to sit for about thirty seconds and then dipped
in water. It was then partially dried in the dark,
often using blotting paper and was loaded damp
into the camera. After an exposure of up to ten
minutes, depending on the weather, time of day and
intensity of the chemicals used, a latent image was
formed.
• To develop the image, the paper was again dipped
in a bath of silver-nitrate, acetic and gallic acids, and
washed over with a fixing liquid such as bromide of
potassium.
Strictly speaking, the
term calotype applied
only to the negative –
the positive prints
were made by placing
the negative on top of
sensitized salted
paper. This was then
laid flat in a frame
and exposed to
daylight until a
positive image
appeared.
Positive Image
Negative image.
List 3 advantages of the Calotype
over the Daguerreotype.
• Reproducible image – negative
from which copies could be
made.
• Fibers of paper produced a soft,
slightly textured image – more
like a charcoal drawing
• The calotype had warmer tones
and was more durable than the
daguerreotype, which was easily
damaged by touching
List 2 disadvantages of the Calotype.
• Lacked the sharp detail of the
Dagerreotype.
• The calotype had a tendency to fade
and could also be quite blurred
because of imperfections in the paper.
• The materials the calotype used were
less sensitive to light than those of the
daguerreotype, adding more time to
the already lengthy process.
The Pencil of Nature, written by
Henry Fox Talbot, was published in
six installments between 1844 and
1846, and was the "first
photographically illustrated book to
be commercially published”. It was
wholly executed by the new art of
Photogenic Drawing, without any
aid whatever from the artist's pencil
and regarded as an important and
influential work in the history of
photography. The book detailed
Talbot's development of the
calotype process and included 24
calotype prints, each one pasted in
by hand, illustrating some of the
possible applications of the new
technology.
Since photography was still very much a novelty,
Talbot felt compelled to insert the following
notice into his book:
The plates of the present work are impressed by
the agency of Light alone, without any aid
whatever from the artist's pencil. They are the
sun-pictures themselves, and not, as some
persons have imagined, engravings in imitation.
Albumen Prints
&
Cartes de Visite
Carte de Visite photographs-small albumen prints mounted
on cards 2-1/2 by 4 inches--were
wildly popular and made for
decades in countries around the
world. The format was an
international standard; for the
first time, relatives and friends
could exchange portraits,
knowing they would find a place
in the recipient's family album-whether that album was located
in Brooklyn, Berlin or Brazil
Unlike earlier photographs
made with such processes
as the daguerreotype and
ambrotype, cartes de visite
could be sent through the
mail without the need for a
bulky case and fragile coverglass. Their small size also
made them relatively
inexpensive, and they
became so widespread that
by 1863 Dr. Oliver Wendell
Holmes would write, "Card
portraits, as everybody
knows, have become the
social currency, the 'greenbacks' of civilization.”
British photographer Julia Margaret
Cameron brought her bulky camera
close to her sitters, capturing their
portraits on large plates
(approximately 11 x 14 in.). Cameron
often wrote below these life-size
prints, “From Life Not Enlarged.” She
was known for capturing the
psychological and intellectual
qualities of her sitters. When making
this portrait of Sir John F. W.
Herschel, Cameron encouraged the
famed astronomer to move during
the exposure, blurring the finished
print. She thought this might visually
evoke his reputation for innovation.
Julia Margaret Cameron (England, 1815–1879)
Sir John F. W. Herschel. 1867
Albumen print
14 x 10 3/4 in. image size
English author and photographer
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was a
photographic artist and a prominent
member of Victorian society. Dodgson
(better known by his pen name, Lewis
Carroll) made studies of children,
landscapes, sculpture, skeletons, and
animals. His close relationship with the
Liddell family is recorded in photographs
he made of them. This albumen print
pictures Lorina Liddell, whose younger
sister Alice Liddell is alleged to be the
young girl immortalized in
Dodgson’s/Carroll’s masterpiece, Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland.
Charles Lutwidge [Lewis Carroll]
Dodgson (England, 1832–1898)
Lorina Liddell with Black Doll. 1858
Albumen print
5 1/8 x 4 1/8 in. image size
Samuel Bourne (England, 1834–1912)
Avenue of the Poplars at Srinagar (Srinagar,
India). 1869
Albumen print
9 1/2 x 11 3/4 in. image size.
British photographer Samuel
Bourne was interested in
visiting foreign places and
capturing picturesque
images of the unfamiliar. In
1863 Bourne traveled to
British-controlled India. In
this albumen print, his
subject is a neat phalanx of
trees retreating in orderly
fashion toward a vanishing
point. A Victorian
appreciation of orderly
spatial relationships is
manifested in Bourne’s
rational approach to
composition.
This albumen print pictures the
Pantheon in Paris, a monument that
prolific French photographer
Édouard-Denis Baldus returned to
photograph repeatedly over the
course of his career. Baldus
cultivated a photographic style that
allowed nothing to detract from the
essence of his architectural
subjects. In this print, he frames the
building so that nothing draws the
viewer’s attention from the weighty
presence of its façade.
Édouard-Denis Baldus (France, b.
Prussia, 1813–1889)
Panthéon [from Vues de Paris en
Photographie, no. 32]. 1858
Albumen print
10 5/16 x 7 7/8 in. image size
Collodion
Wet-Plate
Frederick Scott Archer invented the process
in 1851
Frederick Scott Archer
(1813–1 May 1857)
In 1851 Frederick Scott
Archer published details
of the wet collodion
process, this produced a
grainless glass negative
capable of making
beautifully sharp prints,
on salt or albumen paper,
and it dominated
photography for the next
thirty years, that is until
the introduction of the
dry plate in the 1880s.
In 1851 Frederick Scott
Archer published
details of the wet
collodion process, this
produced a grainless
glass negative capable
of making beautifully
sharp prints, on salt or
albumen paper, and it
dominated
photography for the
next thirty years, that is
until the introduction
of the dry plate in the
1880s.
An under exposed negative backed partly by
white paper and partly by black paper. The
lower left half is clearly seen as a positive
image while the upper right half is also clearly
seen to be an under exposed negative.
During the 1850s an ingenious
American conceived the idea
that rather than using a black
backed glass plate as a
support for a positive image,
by substituting instead a thin
shiny black lacquered iron
sheet as a support, an even
cheaper and much more
robust product could be
produced. This became known
as the Ferrotype, from one of
the early trade names. Like the
ambrotype, the positive image
was produced by making an
under exposed negative on a
shiny black background. The
slang name Tintype was often
used for the Ferrotype.
Ferrotypes and Ambrotypes both are, like
Daguerrotypes, one off processes and the
Ferrotype shares the Daguerrotype’s
lateral reversal or mirror image effect.
Despite this drawback the Ferrotype’s
victory over the ambroype was complete
by the middle 1860s and the ambrotype
quickly followed the Daguerrotype into
oblivion. There are several reasons for
this, apart from the cheapness of the
product. The Ferrotype, because it is only
a very thin piece of steel sheet was easily
mounted in albums unlike the glass
ambrotype, also for the same reason it
could be slipped into an envelope and
posted quite safely
What was the process?
Plate/Exposure/development/fixing
• Glass plate coated with collodion
(nitrocellulose dissolved in ether and
alcohol).
• Mixture of collodion and potassium
iodiode poured onto glass and the plate
tilted from side to side to spread the
mixture. (Remainder poured back into its
container.)
• Then the plate was sensitized by being
dipped in a bath of silver nitrate.
• Exposed for a latent image while still
damp, then developed in pyrogallic acid or
iron sulfate, fixed, washed and dried
Ambrotype
Collodion coated on glass produced a
negative from which a positive could be
printed on what type of paper?
Albumen-coated paper.
If the glass negative was backed with a
dark material like black velvet, paper or
paint, the image was transformed into a
positive or ambrotype.
What were the advantages of this
process over the Daguerreotype or
Calotype?
It had the sharpness of a Daguerreotype
and the reproducibility of the Calotype. It
was more light sensitive then either of
them with exposures as short as five
seconds.
What was the biggest disadvantage of the Collodian process?
• The plate had to be exposed and processed while it was still wet.
That meant that the photographer had to travel with a darkroom! A
photographer from that era described a typical load that someone
might carry:
• 9 x 11” brass-bound camera weighing
21 pounds
• A water-tight glass bath in a wooden
case holding over 90 ozs. Of solution
(nitrate of silver) weighing 12 lbs.
• A plate box with a dozen 9 x 11” plates
weighing almost 12 lbs.
• A box 24 x 18 x 12” into which werep
packed lenses, chemicals and all the
hundred-and-one articles necessary for a hard day’s work, and
weighing about 28 lbs.
• A tripod (over 5 feet in length) and weighing about 5 pounds.
• A 40 x 40” tent that was used for the darkroom; standing 6.5
feet high with ample table accommodation. The whole thing
packed into a leather case and weighs about 40 pounds.
The whole load is about 120 pounds!
Define Ambrotype
A collodion wet-plate process in which the emulsion
was coated on a glass plate. The negative image
produced was visible as a positive image when the
glass was backed with a dark material.
What does Ambrotype
mean in Greek?
Ambrotype - from the
greek word Ambro
meaning imperishable.
What does Calotype
mean in Greek?
Calotype means beautiful
impression after the
Greek Kalos and typos.
Define Tintype
A historic collodion wet-plate
process in which the emulsion is
coated onto a dark metal plate. It
produces a direct positive image.
What was one of the most
popular uses for Collodion
prints? (used as
entertainment)
Stereographic photographs. If two
photographs are taken side by side
to emulate what are eyes see, they
can then be viewed through a
stereoscope which gives the
impression of a 3-D image.
Between the 1840s and the 1920s, stereographs served as
an important method of entertainment, education, and
virtual travel—predecessors to contemporary forms of
media such as television and movies.
Why were Ambrotypes often
kept in a frame within a
protective case?
Ambrotypes were made of glass
and easily damaged.
Cyanotype
What is a cyanotype?
Cyanotype is a photographic
printing process that gives a cyanblue print. The process was
popular in engineering circles well
into the 20th century. The simple
and low-cost process enabled
them to produce large-scale copies
of their work, referred to as
blueprints.
Two chemicals are used in
the process:
• Ammonium iron (III) citrate
• Potassium ferricyanide.
Who invented the
cyanotype? What was the
year?
The English scientist and
astronomer Sir John Herschel
discovered this procedure in
1842
Who was the first
person to use the
cyanotype process to
photographically
illustrate a book
using cyanotypes?
A photogram of Algae,
made by Anna Atkins
as part of her 1843
book, Photographs of
British Algae:
Cyanotype Impressions,
the first book
composed entirely of
photographic images.
"Sir John Herschel,
invented the
cyanotype
photographic process
in 1842. Atkins
applied the process to
algae by making
cyanotype
photograms that were
contact printed by
placing the
unmounted
dried-algae directly
onto cyanotype paper."
Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype
Impressions - 1843
Anna Atkins
Anna Atkins, an English
botanist and photographer,
the reason this process was
used in photography. Atkins
being a friend of Herschel,
took his newly discovered
process and applied it to her
seaweed collection. She
began making contact prints
by placing the objects
directly onto the coated
paper and then exposing
them to light, creating
a silhouette effect. By using
this process, Atkins became
the first ever female
photographer
Blue Print of
Auditorium
Cyanotype Prints
Type: Box rollfilm
Introduced: Feb 1900
Discontinued: Oct 1901
Film size: 117
Picture size: 2 1/4 X 2 1/4"
Manufactured: US
Lens: Meniscus
Shutter: Rotary
Numbers made: 245,000
Original price: $1.00
Description:
Leatherette covered Card box with a wooden film carrier
no finder but V sighting lines on top
clip-on accessory reflecting finder available from August 1900
detachable film winding key
This camera introduced the 2 1/4" square format
Fun Facts:
This camera is considered by many experts to be the most
important camera ever manufactured. The reason is that it was
produced so cheaply that anyone, not just professionals or
people of means, could own it. Because it was so simple to use,
anyone could operate it right out of the box.
The film was also cheap, even for 1900. For less than $2.00
anyone could buy The Brownie, a roll of film, and get it
processed. The February 1900 Trade Circular lists a 6 exposure
roll of transparent film at $0.15, paper-negative film at $0.10,
and $0.40 for processing them!
The Brownie also showed the marketing genius of George
Eastman. Eastman was first a film manufacturer, but he could
see what bringing photography to the masses, especially
marketing to young people, via cheap but durable cameras
would mean for future film sales and processing. A camera in
every home meant alot of film to be sold and processed. He
could not have been more correct!
The first Brownie camera was shipped on Feb. 8, 1900 and gave
birth to the snapshot.
Type: Self-erecting folding
rollfim Introduced: 1948
Discontinued: 1954 Film size:
620 Picture size: 2 1/4 X 3 1/4"
Manufactured: UK Lenses:
Meniscus fixed focus Anaston
f/6.3, 100mm focusing Shutters:
Kodette II (Meniscus lens and
shutter release cable capable)
Dakon (Anaston lens) with
bayonet flash contacts Numbers
made: Well over 300,000
Original price: ?
Description: Morocco grained
imitaion leather covering;
folding optical frame finder;
except for the optical frame
finder the meniscus lens model
is essentially the same as the
pre-war version (Six-20 Folding
Brownie).
1915 AD
Kodak
Kodak is the most famous name in
cameras. This is the No.2 Folding
Brownie Autograph Camera. It is
easy to use and was very popular.
Before Kodak came along taking
photographs was quite difficult.
Kodak cameras used film.
Photographers could send their
films off or put them into chemist
shops to be developed. A
photographer needed no
knowledge of chemistry. Being
easy, families took many
photographs of holidays, children
playing, weddings and so on
Kodak Reflex Camera
The Kodak Reflex camera was
manufactured by the Eastman
Kodak company from 1946 to
1949. A good quality, medium
format, twin lens camera. The
Kodak Reflex was fitted with a
Kodak f3.5 lens in a flash
Kodamatic shutter capable of
providing speeds from 1/2 to
1/200 of a second second, plus
Bulb and Time settings. Originally
priced at $100.00.
Wet Plate Camera