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Portraits of people were the most popular type of photographs taken in the 1800's. Photographic portraits were much less expensive than painted ones, they took less time (5-40 minute exposures vs. hours to months for paintings) and were more accurate. Peoplewho painted people’s portraits quickly went out of business or became daguerreotypists themselves.
Daguerreotype vsCalotype Pitfalls • VERY delicate • shiny, had to be tilted against a black surface. • impossible to make prints from the single glass positive. • TONS of chemicals • blurry images • texture of the paper showing through the positive. • images faded quickly due to the simplified chemical process. Advantages • could make many prints (copies) • more practical & economical •crystal clear, hyper real images
Remember, the Calotype provided the first practical method of producing “prints” on paper from a single camera exposure via a negative.
While Daguerreotypes were single plate images on copper, with a glass topper. The very crystal clear images required the glass enclosure to keep the photo (silver remember) from oxidation & ruining the photo.
People wanted cheaper photography like Calotype& the reproducing print properties, but they also wanted clarity & sharpness from a non paper negative. Intro, the wet plate process known as Collodion.
This was like Talbot's process but the negatives were made of smooth glass instead of paper. This produced sharper images and lasted longer than paper so it was easier to produce many paper prints from one glass negative.
This new process was not only more convenient but the materials could be made much more sensitive to light, greatly reducing exposure times. "Collodion process" is usually taken to be synonymous with the "collodion wet plate process", a very inconvenient form which required the photographic material to be coated, sensitized, exposed and developed within the span of about fifteen minutes, necessitating a portable darkroom for use in the field.
Another collodian process that became very popular due to the cheap output process was the Tintype. A tintype is a photograph made by creating a direct positive on a sheet of iron metal that is blackened by painting, lacquering or enameling and is used as a support for a collodion photographic emulsion. Photos could be made within mere minutes after the picture is taken. Tintypes did not need mounting in a case and were not as delicate as photographs that used glass for the support.
Intro of the portable dark-room for documentary war photos. The civil war became a huge event to “document” with these new process. This was also the first time that dead bodies photographed in a war. These “tolls of war” could be construed as war___________. “Ulysses S. Grant” ~ Mathew Brady
Until the late 19th century, cameras only had one size aperture, photographer had to judge the light and replace the cap at the right time • Hard for landscape photographers – trees moved, people moved, clouds moved • Noone had the “luxury” of the ripoffinstagram ;)
