Wet & Dry Plate Collodion

This process was introduced in 1851 by Frederick Scott Archer and marks a watershed in photography. Until then the two processes in use were the daguerreotype and the calotype. Daguerreotypes were better than calotypes in terms of detail and quality, but could not be reproduced; calotypes were reproducible, but suffered from the fact that any print would also show the imperfections of the paper.

The collodion process had several advantages:

  • Being more sensitive to light than the calotype process, it reduced the exposure times drastically – to as little as two or three seconds.
  • Because a glass base was used, the images were sharper than with a calotype. (Glass being clear and not having any sort of texture like paper does).
  • Because the process was never patented, photography became far more widely used.
  • The price of a paper print was about a tenth of that of a daguerreotype.

There is however, one main disadvantage: the process is by no means an easy one. First the collodion had to be spread carefully over the entire plate. The plate then had to be sensitised, exposed and developed whilst the plate was still wet; the sensitivity dropped once the collodion had dried. It is often known as the wet plate collodion process for this reason.

There are three (3) variants of collodion photography:

    1. The Collodion Negative
      The wet collodion negative was the first negative-positive process that gave sharp (near grain-less), detailed prints. The collodion negative was most commonly printed on albumen paper. Talbot’s Calotypes (paper negatives) preceded collodion. For over thirty years, from the 1850s to the 1880s, the wet plate collodion process was the most commonly practiced photographic method around the world.
    2. The Ambrotype or Collodion Positive on Glass
      The Ambrotype process (from Greek “ambrotos”, “immortal”) or amphitype was invented by James Ambrose Cutting (1814-1867) in 1854. Cutting was a 19th century American photographer and inventor. The Ambrotype resembled a daguerreotype (and is often mistaken for one) except glass, instead of a silver plate, was used for the base of the image. The Ambrotype is a thin or underexposed collodion negative on a glass plate. When backed with black varnish, paper or cloth the thin negative turned into a positive photograph. This technique was popular until the 1860s. Today, black glass and other stained glass are used in addition to clear glass for Ambrotypes.
    3. Tintype
      The Tintype, also known as a Ferrotype, is a photographic process invented in the United States in 1856 by Hamilton Smith. These photographs became the most common form for inexpensive images made during the Civil War. The Tintype was very similar to the Ambrotype, except a blackened piece of sheet iron was used, instead of glass, as the base of the photograph.