RE: Color Daguerreotypes?

There is a way to make color daguerreotypes by sensitizing
a silver plate electrochemically (with release of chlorine gas)
and very long exposures. In the 1850s, Becquerel mentions his
experiments in his book "La Lumière" and also Niepce de Saint
Victor pursued his experiments. Becquerel made color images of
a prism, but the plate was not sensitive enough to make
dags 'in-camera'. Also they couldn't be fixed or the colors
disapeared.

I have seen a modern color plate made by contact printing
a color slide. The maker told me he sensitised the plate by
dipping it in a concentrated mixture of chemicals.
Colors were muted, but apparently they were brighter when 1st made.

Levi Hill wrote a book on his color process, which he named the
Hillotype. The book's title is "A Treatise on Heliochromy" and
has been reprinted, but is still hard to find (but you probably
can get it via an inter-library loan). I'm not sure that his
process was truly a color process of if Hill was good with dyes, but
I've heard some modern daguerreotypists who have seen a few of
his plates in a museum somewhere say that they believed those were
true colors and not dyes. Apparently colors are quite muted on these
plates.

gregory

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jon Danforth [mailto:jdanforth@sc.rr.com]
> Sent: Friday, January 23, 2004 2:54 PM
> To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
> Subject: Color Daguerreotypes?
>
>
> Abrams' "The Invention of Photography" briefly mentions a 'Pastor
> Hill' and
> his attempts at color photography using the Daguerreotype. The
> book didn't
> elaborate on the process or the success but I was wondering if anyone has
> seen or heard of this kind of work? I would guess that the experiments
> would be in the 1860-1866 realm, is that on base?
>
> Maybe they could be talking about a toning procedure but I was under the
> impression that Daguerreotypes were generally toned with Gold after
> development.
>
> -Jon
>
>
Received on Fri Jan 23 16:37:52 2004