The Collodion - Photographic Processes Series - Chapter 5 of 12

Overview

The video explains how the wet collodion process, invented by Frederick Scott Archer in 1851, helped make photography more detailed and reproducible. It combined qualities of two earlier processes: the daguerreotype’s sharp detail and the calotype’s ability to produce multiple prints from a negative. By the late 1850s, collodion photography had largely replaced the daguerreotype.

The process could produce several kinds of photographs:

• Glass negatives, which could be contact-printed to make multiple paper prints.
• Ambrotypes, made by placing a dark backing behind a glass negative so it appeared positive.
• Tintypes, positive images made on metal plates. Despite the name, the plates were not made of tin.

Tintypes became an accessible form of portrait photography. During the American Civil War, soldiers commonly had tintypes made to send home. More broadly, photography changed how people remembered loved ones and historical events: likenesses became a way to preserve memory alongside—and increasingly in place of—stories, poems, and ballads.

Wet Collodion Process

1. Pour collodion onto a glass plate, leaving a thin coating.
2. Place the plate in a silver bath.
3. While the plate is still wet with silver nitrate, expose it in the camera.
4. Return to the darkroom and develop the image before the plate dries.
5. Use the glass plate as a negative to make prints, or adapt it to create a direct positive image.

Because the plate had to remain wet during preparation, exposure, and development, photographers needed careful planning and a portable darkroom when working outdoors. Landscape photographers might transport chemicals and equipment in a wagon. Pour marks visible on some negatives are characteristic traces of the process.

Speakers and Sources

• An unnamed presenter or narrator demonstrates and discusses a collodion negative, along with the process’s history and uses.
• Frederick Scott Archer is identified as the inventor of the wet collodion process but is not a speaker in the video.