Just bought my first period daguerrotype!

TheFlyingCamera

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• Sep 4, 2006

• #1

I was at an antiques mall over the weekend and found a genuine vintage daguerrotype for $2! It is in poor shape, but nonetheless, it is a genuine dag. It's really cool to finally see one when most of what you see labelled as a daguerrotype in antiques malls are actually cased tintypes or ambrotypes. I'm psyched. Now I'm on the hunt for more of them...

 

Stephanie Brim

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• Sep 4, 2006

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Awesome.

I'd just like to start collecting handmade black and white prints. I've never seen a Daguerreotype close up...can you...er...take a photo of it and post it?

 

JBrunner

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• Sep 4, 2006

• #3

Congrats,

Its a slippery slope!

 

Ole

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• Sep 5, 2006

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I bought one on ebay a year ago just to see what they're really like. The trick is to find a listing with a bad picture - daguerrotypes are very difficult to photograph! If the picture in the auction looks good, it's probably a tintype

 

OP

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TheFlyingCamera

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• Sep 5, 2006

• #5

Stephanie Brim said:

Awesome.

I'd just like to start collecting handmade black and white prints. I've never seen a Daguerreotype close up...can you...er...take a photo of it and post it?

Click to expand...

I'll have to try and play around with lighting it - the biggest problem is that the underlying material behind the image is essentially a highly polished mirror. If I can be forgiven for doing it, I'll try it with my d*g*t*l (one of the few things it's good for, since I'll have to do a LOT of dorking around and experimenting with the lighting to get it right).

 

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TheFlyingCamera

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• Sep 10, 2006

• #6

Well, I´m officially now a Daguerr-adict. I bought a second one here in Argentina. This one is a world different, basically museum quality. The case is complete, and the image is easy to see, and there is NO tarnish forming around the edges. This one cost a fair bit more than the first one, but I think the price was fair given the quality. This one is of an Argentinian lady from approximately 1860. When I get home, I´ll try to shoot a digipic of it to post.

 

smieglitz

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• Sep 10, 2006

• #7

Aren't they great? I have a couple old dags and I've started collecting ambrotypes of late. Maybe we could get a new APUG gallery started up to show off pieces in our collections.

Joe

 

BrianShaw

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• Sep 10, 2006

• #8

TheFlyingCamera said:

This one is of an Argentinian lady from approximately 1860.

Click to expand...

Possibly earlier than that... the ambrotype technology came in during the mid-1850s and is known to have quickly replaced daguerreotypes. By the 1860s tintypes (ferrotypes) -- a technology two generations "more advanced" than dags -- was beginning to become the favored technology.