What was it? ("Tintype"?)

I have been playing with Rocklands pseudo-tintype process for awhile now and it looks very much like most of the original tintypes I have seen.

This past week I had a chance to do a very close inspection on a number of original "tintypes" that were produced in the 1880s/1890s either in southern Ontario or the Minneapolis area and they were unlike anything I have ever seen!

The metal plates were very crudely cut and irregular shape but all about 2x3". The plates look like they had been hand coated with black laquer paint. The coating (which looked like it could be collodian) was quite even and very thin.

The shocking part of these plates was the quality of the images! The whites were bright, shiny white, as white as a sheet of good quality paper or white enamel paint. The blacks were intense gloss black and the plates all had a very good tonal range and exceptional detail. The overall image quality reminded me of a contact print on rosin paper.

This is unlike anything I have seen on metal plates before and I am wondering what the process was.

(The dates are certain as some of the people in the photo had passed away by the 1890s.)

Thanks for any hints!

Calamity Jane said:

.. the metal plates were very crudely cut and irregular shape but all about 2x3". The plates look like they had been hand coated with black laquer paint. The coating (which looked like it could be collodian) was quite even and very thin...
This is unlike anything I have seen on metal plates before and I am wondering what the process was.

Click to expand...

Most likely, they were Tintypes. The test: try applying a magnet to the back of the image; if it is magnetic, They are tintypes, originally called "ferrotypes" due to the sheet iron base.

Tintypes were produced from a "wet collodion" process, exactly the same as "ambrotypes" which were on a glass base:

"Usually, the plate was coated with a wet collodion emulsion and exposed for a relatively short time, not enough to produce a negative of full density. It was developed in a physical developer such as pyro and silver nitrate, and fixed in either hypo or potassium cyanide, after which it was washed in the usual manner. The resulting negative was a very thin negative, formed of finely divided silver which appeared either light gray or white. If this was then placed on a black surface, it appeared to be a positive". (1)

The "black surface" of a tintype was sheet iron, japanned black.

(1) From The Encyclopedia of Photography, Volume 1, page 130.
.

Ed, Calamity has been working for several months on setting up a side business making tintypes; I'm pretty sure she knows what original tintypes look like, and I'm certain (from reading her inquiry threads here and on the Large Format Forum) that she knows, in considerable detail, how they were originally made.

If she says these plates don't look like most traditional tintypes, then I'd go along with suggesting they're a different process.

Calamity, from what you describe, is it possible these are either reversal processed (i.e. developed, bleached, reexposed, redeveloped, then fixed) or printed from a transparent negative (contact or projection) onto a *white* enameled plate, essentially like a paper print made on collodion coated enamel? That would give the bright, clean whites you're seeing, and allow for more exposure and stronger development to produce the dark blacks. The back side of the plate could/would have been japanned separately from the front enamel, or painted black after the fact, to make them look more like traditional tintypes -- but this process, working from a glass negative, would have lent itself to producing multiple identical copies of a single image.

A microscope might let you tell for certain (without doing anything to damage the plates) -- you'd see silver grains in the dark areas, instead of the light areas as on a traditional tintype.

I wonder if they could have been toned? I belive there were various toners which could brighten the silver - lead or mercury, perhaps?

All my old literature is European, and tintypes never really caught on on this side of the Atlantic, so I don't really know.

Donald Qualls said:

Ed, Calamity has been working for several months on setting up a side business making tintypes; I'm pretty sure she knows what original tintypes look like, and I'm certain (from reading her inquiry threads here and on the Large Format Forum) that she knows, in considerable detail, how they were originally made.
If she says these plates don't look like most traditional tintypes, then I'd go along with suggesting they're a different process.

Click to expand...

Well, of COURSE I should have realized that from her message:

Calamity Jane:

"I have been playing with the Rocklands pseudo-tintype process for a while and it looks very much like the original tintypes I have seen."

and,

"Thanks for any hints!"

I remembered reading something about the "tintype process", so I plowed through my "The Encyclopedia of Photography", from 1978 or so .. and tried to HELP. That is ALL I tried to do. My "hint" was to try the "magnetic" support trick to see if they were in fact, magnetic.

Now....

Tintypes were the products of a "wet collodion" process. There is mention of a later "dry plate" emulsion where the collodion was replaced with gelatin and applied to plates. From the same source:

"Many dry-plate processes were tried, but none was successful until Richard Leach Maddox (1816- 1902), a British physician, found that gelatin could be substituted for collodion.
His discovery was revolutionary. Now it became possible to coat plates well before exposure, and process them long afterward. Besides, the new geletino-bromide plates were so much more sensitive than the old wet plate that exposures could be made in a fraction of a second."...

From the article it is suggested that these "dry plates" were manufactured on glass. I would imagine that an enterprising type could have used other materials as a base. Come to think of it, it sounds an awful lot like "Liquid Emulsion".

I wonder ... I remember the "Three-Minute (?? What were they called?) "Photo Booths", located for the most part, in Amusement Parks. One would drop a quarter (also ?) in the slot, sit in front of the lens, and in a short time a metallic-framed ... (emulsion on metal??) photograph would drop down a slot in to be retrieved my the client. I wonder about that process -- possibly "dry plate"?

The "instant photo" booths I remember delivered a strip of 4 wallet size B&W (or, more recently, color) prints in a couple minutes; those, as I recall, used a reversal process and exposed directly on the paper to provide a positive. I don't know any reason why the earlier metal framed prints would have been any different -- except that they were most likely on a rigid backing to facilitate the machine inserting the plate into the frame (or even developed already in the frame, depending how simple the frame really was).

At the risk of getting even more off-topic (sorry Jane!), AFAIK the photo-booths were a special application of Polaroid. Film and paper were souped, pressed together, separated, film discarded, and the prints came out the little slot with the air blower in. The timing seems about right, too...

I have to wonder if the paint applied to the "tin" might have something to do with it. At the time, in addition to lacquers, there were also enamels tinted with India ink. And the lacquers used on the early Fords, for instance, took many days to dry between coats. Who knows what chemicals may have been in the paint and what effect they would have on the emulsion after more than 100 years.

Thanks for all the ideas guys!

ED: I think the Rocklands "tintypes" are a gelatin process, gelatin and silver halide - proprietary formula, unfortunately. They'd be very hard to destinguish from an original wet plate tintype after the fact. I like the process because I can prepare a large number of plates ahead of time and they can be ready to go to the customer, dried and mounted, within a half hour of exposure. The process is also quite stable and repeatable (after one masters the technique of getting a VERY even coating of emulsion - something I am still trying to perfect).

I'll do some research on Maddox and see what I can find.

I remember hearing about the "tintype photo booths" but have never seen one. No idea what process they may have used.

Whatever process was used on the plates I saw was certainly "home grown" as the plates appeared to be "hacked out of sheet metal" with a poor pair of snips and brush-painted (or dipped) - far more crude than any manufacturer would have done. The photographic part of the process was, however, SUPURB!

I'll try to scan the tintypes (if the owner will permit) and post them tomorrow.

ARRRRRRG!!!!!

I went back to the owner of the tintypes today and asked to see them again. Of the 8 tintypes he had, only one of them was remarkable for it's brightness and clarity - the others are VERY GOOD tintypes, but not knock-your-socks-off.

The spectacular plate wasn't in the envelope - all the others were, but not the special one. I asked what happened to it. The owner said all the tintypes he showed me last week were in that envelope.

Now I am beginning to doubt my sanity! I SAW IT! I KNOW I saw it

Hi there,

C.J.,
"Now I am beginning to doubt my sanity! I SAW IT! I KNOW I saw it"

That's called 'a senior moment'.

Plain salt is used as an intensifier for film, it could have been used to 'pump up' the tintypes you saw. The 'blacks were intense gloss black' would have to be the paint and coating UNLESS it was varnished.

Good luck with the hunt.

I think deguerratypes (sp) can be confused with typtypes....

Are the amazing tintypes deguerreortypes(sp?)?

...corey