Monday, 24 June 2013

Historical processes

Wet Plate Collodion.

The collodion process is an early photographic process, invented by Frederic Scott Archer. It was introduced in the 1850s and by the end of that decade it had almost entirely replaced the first practical photographic process, the daguerreotype. During the 1880s the collodion process, in turn, was largely replaced by gelatin dry plates—glass plates with a photographic emulsion of silver halides suspended in gelatin. The dry gelatin emulsion was not only more convenient but could be made much more sensitive, greatly reducing exposure times.



Collodion processes were capable of recording microscopically fine detail, so their use for some special purposes continued long after the advent of the gelatin dry plate. The wet plate collodion process was still in use in the printing industry in the 1960s for line and tone work (mostly printed material involving black type against a white background) as for large work it was much cheaper than gelatin film. One collodion process, the tintype, was still in limited use for casual portraiture by some itinerant and amusement park photographers as late as the 1930s, by which time tintypes were already regarded as quaintly old-fashioned.





Like a lot of the old processes this form of photography is making a revival with many photographers and artists experimenting and producing images by using this historic process.
Thanks to:
edrossphotography.com
www.wentennavarro.com


© Sean Wareing. 2013

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