Early Photography - A Flash Of Darkness

The Race to Sell the World’s First Camera

The 1839 Susse Frères Daguerréotype I came across what might be the first camera you could actually buy at the excellent Westlicht permanent exhibition in Vienna. The museum displays an impressive collection of 360 cameras and also hosts a 3D...

Daguerrotype, Early photography, Giroux Daguerreotype, history, Susse Frères, Susse Frères Daguerreotype, Westlicht

The Short Lived, Hazardous Jobs of the Daguerrotype Era

Few people today are familiar with the work of the plate polisher. This is unsurprising, given how quickly this role came and went. The plate polisher was one of the roles created by Daguerre’s new 1839 photographic process, which produced a small,...

Daguerreotypist, Daguerrotype

From Wet to Dry: The Gelatin Dry Plate Era, 1870s–1900s

The gelatin dry plate, introduced in the 1870s, was a major milestone in photographic history. Unlike the wet collodion process, which required plates to be sensitized, exposed, and developed while still wet, dry plates were factory-prepared and could be stored for...

carbon print, gelatin dry plate, gum bichromate, photogravure, platinum print

Made with Collodion: The Media that Shaped An Era

The Miners' Bridge, on the Llugwy, North Wales, Roger Fenton, 1853, collodion/albumen (Source: Wikipedia Commons) The collodion process of 1851 transformed how images were made, shared, and preserved. It was also known as wet-plate photography and involves coating a piece...

albumen print, Ambrotype process, Collodian, collodion process, Ferrotype, tintype process, wet-plate

The Life and Cameras of Thomas Ottewill

For a camera maker of such influence, Thomas Ottewill is biographically elusive. We have examples of his cameras, but we know little about his business, less about his family life and nothing at all about his final years and death....

C.G.H. Kinnear, Collodian, Daguerrotype, large format

When Photos Looked Like Paintings – Pictorialism

Waterloo Place by Leonard Misonne (1899) There is something magical to me about pictorialist photography, particularly urban pictorialism, as shown here in Leonard Misonne's accomplished example from 1899. Here, Horse-drawn carriages seem to dissolve into the luminous haze, while lamplight...

Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Edward Weston, film, George Eastman, gum bichromate, Hill and Adamson, Julia Margaret Cameron, Leonard Misonne, Oscar Gustav Rejlander, Paul Strand, pictorialism, pictorialist, what is pictorialism?, Women Pictorialists

The Kodak No 2 Folding Pocket Brownie

The No. 2 Pocket Brownie on Deal Pier. Gimbal head not required! The Kodak No. 2 Folding Brownie was introduced in 1904 as part of the the Folding Brownie series. This was Kodak's least expensive folding roll film camera range...

film, Folding Cameras, Kodak, Kodak Brownie, Meniscus Lens

The First Camera Lens

The first camera lens was produced by French optician and instrument maker Charles Chevalier's optical firm. Chevalier produced lenses for photographic pioneers Nicéphore Niépce and Louis Daguerre, who both used his lenses for their ground-breaking work in photography. I researched...

Achromatic Meniscus Lens, Charles Chevalier, Daguerrotype, Kodak, Kodak Brownie, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, Meniscus Lens

Early Cameras, a Timeline

This timeline of early cameras describes significant photographic milestones and early cameras representative of their year of introduction between the inception of photography and 1900. I've also provided an overview of the most important developments decade by decade from 1840-1900...

C.G.H. Kinnear, Captain Francis Fowke, Charles Chevalier, Daguerrotype, Dallmeyer, Dubroni No. 1, Field camera, Gandolfi, Giroux Daguerreotype, Houghton-Butcher, J.H. Dallmeyer, Kodak, Ottomar Anschütz, Sanderson, snapshot, Susse Freres, Tailboard camera, Thomas Sutton, Thornton-Pickard, View camera, Voigtlander

Photography Timeline – From Chemistry to Computation

My Kodak No 2 Folding Autographic Brownie There are many strands in a photography timeline - the chemistry of film and processing, the physics of optics, the mechanical engineering of shutters, the electronics of metering and digital photography, and the...

Ambrotype process, Calotype, Canon, collodion process, Cooke triplet lens, Cyanotype, Daguerrotype, George Eastman, Ilford, Kodak, Leica, Leica M3, Leica M6, LOMO, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, Nikon, Nikon F, Nikon F2, Nikon F3, Nikon F6, Nikon FM3A, Olympus, Oskar Barnack, Petzval, pictorialism, Rolleiflex, Samsung, Sir John Herschel, tintype process, Voigtlander, William Henry Fox Talbot, Zeiss Planar

Wet Plate Photography – Alcohol, Ether and Gun Cotton

AKA Gun Cotton Photography Wet plate photography was not easy. The wet-plate collodion process used between the 1850s and 1880s uses a solution of gun-cotton in ether and alcohol and requires the entire photographic process including coating the plate, exposing...

collodion process, film, Hampton Gay, Julia Margaret Cameron, large format, long exposure, nineteenth century, Peter Henry Emerson, Roger Fenton, William Henry Fox Talbot

Fox Talbot and Early Photography

Fox Talbot at dawn The recent exhibition Fox Talbot: Dawn of the Photograph at the Science Museum in London which ended on September 11th 2016 was described as ‘magical to behold’ by Time Out and ‘ground-breaking’ by The Times. I found it extremely...

Calotype, Camera Obscura, collodion process, Daguerrotype, film, Hippolyte Bayard, history, London, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, nineteenth century, Sir John Herschel, William Henry Fox Talbot