ABOUT FERROTYPE PROCESS
Ferrotypes first appeared in America in the 1850s, but didn’t become popular in Britain until the 1870s. They were still being made by while-you-wait street photographers as late as the 1950s.
The ferrotype process was a variation of the collodion positive, and used a similar process to wet plate photography.
A very underexposed negative image was produced on a thin iron plate. It was blackened by painting, lacquering or enamelling, and coated with a collodion photographic emulsion. The dark background gave the resulting image the appearance of a positive. Unlike collodion positives, ferrotypes did not need mounting in a case to produce a positive image.
The ability to utilise a very under exposed image meant that a photographer could prepare, expose, develop, and varnish a ferrotype plate in just a few minutes. This, along with the resilience and cheapness of the medium (iron, rather than glass), meant that ferrotypes soon replaced collodion positives as the favourite ‘instant’ process used by itinerant photographers.
WHY ARE FERROTYPES ALSO KNOWN AS TINTYPES?
The ferrotype process was described in 1853 by Adolphe-Alexandre Martin, but it was first patented in 1857 by Hamilton Smith in America, and by Willian Kloen and Daniel Jones in England.
William and Peter Neff manufactured the iron used for the plates, which they called ‘melainotype plates’. A rival manufacturer, Victor Griswold, made a similar product and called them ‘ferrotype plates’.
The term ‘ferrotype’ was in common use, but the public tended to prefer the less formal ‘tintype’, implying the cheap, tinny feeling of the material.
USE THESE CLUES TO IDENTIFY A FERROTYPE
Material
These were made using a thin sheet of iron coated with black enamel and can be identified using a magnet.
Image
Because they are not produced from a negative, the images are reversed (as in a mirror). They are a very dark grey-black and the image quality is often poor.
Case
Ferrotypes were sometimes put into cheap papier-mâché cases or cardboard mounts, but today they are frequently found loose.
Size
Most ferrotypes are fairly small, about 2×3 inches.
Rust spots
Because they are made on thin sheets of iron, ferrotypes often show evidence of rust spots or blisters on the surface where the enamel has started to lift off.
http://www.oxfordduplicationcentre.com/Photographic-Glass-Plate-Scanning-Service-Oxfordshire-UK.html
Thank you for posting this information because this is my camera which was restored at The Repair Shop in 2019. Lack of photographic knowledge prevents me from truly bringing this camera back to life simply because I do not know the chemicles required to produce a photo and create new buttons
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