Tintype

Portrait de femme, anonyme, s.d., 5,8 x 9,5 cm, collection didactique D3P. ©Agathe Calmanovic-Plescoff/D3P/Ville de Paris 

Historical period of production and use

The process was presented for the first time in France by Adolphe Martin in 1852, though many other patents were later filed in England and the United States. It is across the Atlantic that the tintype saw its greatest use principally from the Civil War period through the early twentieth century, under the term "melainotype" or "ferrotype". A quick and cheap process, it was popularized by itinerant photographers.

The manufacturing of a tintype is identical to that of Ambrotypes only the support differs, iron plate replacing the fragile glass plate.

Manufacturing

The manufacturing of a tintype is identical to that of Ambrotypes only the support differs, iron or brass plate replacing the fragile glass plate. A thin metallic plate about 0.15 mm thick is covered with a black varnish consisting of bitumen of Judea and carbon black, and insolubilized by light. It is then coated with collodion sensitized in a solution of silver nitrate. After exposure, the plate is developed and rinsed with water as soon as the image appears. The image is finally fixed, rinsed, and sometimes hand coloured with pigments, before being varnished. In the 20^th century, the collodion layer was replaced by a gelatin-silver bromide emulsion.

The resulting pictures are usually small formats, the smallest ones being the "jewel - portrait" (2.5 × 3 × 3 cm) or the "postage stamp" (1.2 × 2.5 cm) formats. Large-format tintypes (16.2 × 21.6 cm) and landscapes views, on the other hand, are very rare.

Credits

Visual Glossary of Photographic Processes © ARCP / Mairie de Paris, 2023