RE: Sources for wet plate collodion chemicals

I am not aware of any other process that was commonly used to make
images on japanned steel plates -- if you have images on blackened steel
plates, they were almost certainly made using the wet collodion process.

There are probably several things going on here.....

I can corroborate the wide variation in quality (and, in particular,
brightness) of tintypes found today, but have not noticed any
correlation with date of production.

Best regards,

mm

Thanks MM - that's good to know.

This part of the country was settled between 1880 and 1930 so most of
the tintypes I have seen first hand were the pictures that people
brought with them so, of course, they date from that time period. The
tintypes that I see online tend to be from an earlier time period.

What I see as a "change over time" may be actually be due to the fact
that most of the tintypes I have seen were produced in major eastern
cities at a photographer's studios - therefore better access to good
chemicals, more controlled conditions, etc.

Thanks for the observations MM!

Dianne
Received on Wed Aug 31 11:24:51 2005