The tintype, an inexpensive imitation of the
daguerreotype is patented by the American Hamilton L. Smith. It is,
in fact, not made of tin but of a very thin sheet of iron treated
and coated with a light-sensitive emulsion. The tintype becomes
very popular for personal portraits.
Stereoscopic photography also becomes extremly popular at this
period. A special stereo camera with two lenses is used to take
simultaneous photographs of the subject from two viewpoints,
seperated by about the same distance as a pair of human eyes. |
of England makes public his
wet-collodion process, in which he uses a glass plate coated with
collodion as a base for light-sensitive silver halides. His
procedure is less complicated than the daguerrotype process and it
produces a negative that is much sharper than that of the calotype
method. A major inconvenience of the wet-collodion method is the
fact that the plate is light-sensitive only as long as it remains
wet, after it dries it loses its sensitivity. These plates have to
be used immediately after preparation. Since they could not be
prepared in advance, a portable darkroom, in the form of a tent or
a wagon has to accompany the camera.