From: Peter Marshall (petermarshall@cix.co.uk)
Date: 01/11/03-05:36:15 AM Z
Jack has covered the essentials, but anyone who would like a little more
background can take a look at the page on it in a pair of features I wrote
on the collodion process last year - at
http://photography.about.com/library/weekly/aa111802c.htm
Despite having been previously invented in Europe, both the ambrotype and
the melainotype were patented in the USA. The patent office later decided
it should never have allowed Cutting's ambrotype patent, particularly as
it also applied to the use of silver bromide in photography which had
previously been a part of both calotype and daguerreotype processes.
Peter Marshall
Photography Guide at About http://photography.about.com/
email: photography.guide@about.com
_________________________________________________________________
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My London Diary http://mylondondiary.co.uk/diary/
and elsewhere......
> The Ambrotype was invented in the 1850's . . . but, here is Robert
> Legget's
> description from his History of Photography web site.
>
> AMBROTYPE process, The
>
> If a very thin under-exposed negative is placed in front of a dark
> background, the image appears like a positive. This is because the
> silver
> reflects some light whilst the areas with no silver at all will appear
> black. This is the principle behind the Ambrotype process, the pictures
> being more correctly known as Collodion positives.
>
> Ambrotypes were made from the 1850s and up to the late eighties, the
> process
> having been invented by Frederick Scott Archer in collaboration with
> Peter
> Fry, a colleague. Ambrotypes were direct positives, made by
> under-exposing
> collodion on glass negative, bleaching it, and then placing a black
> background - usually black velvet, occasionally varnish - behind it.
> Though
> Ambrotypes slightly resemble Daguerreotypes, the method of production
> was
> very different, and Ambrotypes were much cheaper.
>
> The Ambrotype process was yet another method of reducing the cost of
> photography. It became popular for a number of reasons:
>
> * less exposure time was needed
> * production was cheaper and quicker, as no printing was required
> * as the negative could be mounted the other way, by placing the
> collodion side on top of the backing material, there was no lateral
> reversal, as there was in most Daguerreotypes.
> * unlike Daguerreotypes, they could be viewed from any angle
>
> Ambrotypes became very popular, particularly in America. The process is
> also
> called "Melainotype" in the European continent. Another variant of this
> was
> the Tintype process.
>
> Jack
>
>
> > There are some very beautiful ambrotypes at the Photo-eye online
> > gallery
> > (www.photoeye.com). I'm not sure what an ambrotype is. The artist's
> > statement says that it's a wet plate process. I saw an ambrotype once
> > in a
> > museum. I think it was an Edward Curtis photograph. What exactly is
> > an
> > ambrotype?
> >
> > Anyway these photographs by Raymond Meeks are portraits of athletes
> > who came
> > to the winter olympics in 2002 I think. They are interesting to look
> > at in
> > light of our discussion about portraiture in general and Disfarmer in
> > particular.
> >
> > --shannon
> >
>
>
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