When was tintype invented

Adhesive labels attached to the back of plates are likely to loose their stickiness over time and fall off. For long term storage they should be in a dark, dry place with low humidity and consistent temperatures. Example of dented tintype with damaged emulsion. What are common problems?

The iron plates are thin and susceptible to denting and rusting. The photographic emulsion can crack and come loose. Do NOT try to flatten dents in the plates. This may crack the emulsion of the photograph.

If they appear dirty, do not wash them. Water can rust the metal and wash away any of the photographic emulsion that is loose. If the emulsion is not chipping or flaking, you can dust them lightly with a soft brush. Recently a number of patrons have contacted us asking how to identify and care for tintypes they found in their famiy photograph collections. Read more to find out if you might have a tintype of your own. He would allow the plate to dry until it just became tacky.

Next he dipped the plate into silver nitrate. The photographer had to take the picture before the plate dried completely. It took about five seconds of exposure, so photographers often provided a headrest for portrait sittings to help the subject remain still. The tintype was then mounted and coated with varnish before being presented to the customer. The image on a tintype appears "backward" because it is a negative.

Objects held in the right hand appear to be held in the left, as if looking into a mirror. Tintypes were sturdier than ambrotypes, so they could be mailed or mounted in an album, yet they were thin enough to be cut into smaller shapes for brooches or lockets. They were originally called melainotypes and ferrotypes.

These were made with a piece of japanned or enameled iron that was given a collodion coating containing silver nitrate before exposure. The healthier claim was questionable: potassium cyanide was used as a fixer. Schimmelman notes how people liked the plain, unpretentious, un-artistic look of themselves on tintypes, which you could get from street vendors and, outside cities, traveling photographers.

People also liked the cost: pennies a picture. Eventually, multiple cameras could make multiple images. The presidential campaign was the first to use mass-produced photographs of the candidates, and the Civil War created an enormous demand for portraits of soldiers. There was much less of this for the blockaded Confederacy, where the chemicals used in photography were considered vital to the war effort; for examples, silver nitrate was used to treat venereal diseases and cellulose nitrate part of collodion was used as a smokeless explosive.

Tintypes eventually gave way to an even cheaper, even more portable and album-friendly format: paper prints from celluloid film, although you can still find contemporary artists using the process.

See also: Safely store, display your old family photographs. You may not think to look on the Internet for help in dating old photographs, but actually it's the best place to go.

A variety of websites offer tips and tools, and they have the great advantage of being able to provide visual aids. To learn more about my mystery photo, I checked examples of photos in the collections of Andrew J. Morris and Robert Vaughn. Both websites detail the history of photography, including samples of various types of photography, such as daguerreotype, cabinet card and tintype.

Another extensive online resource is the Library of Congress. Enter a photo type into its search engine and you will see many examples that may turn out to be similar to the photograph you are researching. Based on its size and composition, I confirmed that my picture was a tintype, a photographic technique that came into use in the mids and lasted until the turn of the century. Knowing the type of photo can still leave a large time period, but if you know the subject of the photo, your genealogical research should be able to help you narrow that.

When was the subject born? Did he live in a city or a small town? What work did he do? Both the men in my photo are young, but one appears to be older than the other, and he has arm slung around his younger brother's shoulders.

Both are holding cigars. The elder is wearing a watch chain and a pinky ring. Sadly, the age difference doesn't help me much. Michael was seven years older than Peter, who was seven years older than Timothy. But it does help me rule out a pairing of Michael and Timothy. I now turn to fashion to see if what these men are wearing can help me narrow the date range of the photo. Close examination of sleeves and collars can provide valuable information.

Other things to look for on women are the presence and size of a bustle and the fullness of the skirt. For men, look at vests, neckties, the fit of a jacket loose or fitted and how it is buttoned.

By examining the style of fashion worn by the subjects in an old photograph, it is possible to deduce the approximate date it was taken. Since I'm no fashionista , I turned to websites such as Family Chronicle , which also has published two books on dating photos, for help in matching styles with a particular era.