How do you make a daguerrotype or calotype prints?

How do you make a daguerrotype or calotype prints?



Hi Mitz

Those two processes are different. In fact when they were two competing processes when photography came to be.

Daguerrotypes (after Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre) involves photography on silvered metal plates sensitised by bromine and iodine and 'developed' by mercury vapours. The images are unique since there are no negatives or positives involved. Each photograph is unique. A daguerrotype is both negative and positive- it needs to be viewed at a certain angle to be seen as a positive. The image is really a deposition of whitish mercury on a mirror-like silver surface.

Making daguerrotypes is a very complicated and TOXIC process. The current view cameras can be used once their slides are adapted to take in copper plates. The rest is really hard to do. The copper plate is plated with silver, then buffed to a mirror-like finish.
Then it is sensitised by exposing it to bromine and iodine vapours in a fuming box. The box contains a small dish of bromine or iodine. After sensitisation, the plate is loaded into the slide and exposed. Exposures will be in the order of about 30 seconds even in bright sunlight.

After exposure, the plate is then 'developed' by placing it in a box containing a dish of mercury. The mercury is heated so that it vapourises. Its vapours will settle only on the exposed parts, and doing so produces a visible image. Ones the deposition is complete, the plate is fixed by pouring thiosulphate solution on it. Then finally, the plate is washed carefully. The mercury amalgam image is very delicate and can rub off.

The most toxic step in the process is obviously the developing part. Mercury in open containers at room temperature is already toxic... when heated it becomes even more. Remember that recent incident in a high school here which had to be closed for weeks because some mercury spilled in their science lab? Many students got sick because of this.

Jay.

calotypes, see part II.

Wow i thought it's just as simple as developing a film with a different chemistry. I wonder if anybody's still doing these prints since mercury is already banned. I want to see a daguerrotype print though. Is there one on display in MM?

Thanks a lot Jay.

Calotyes (from Greek kallos, "beautiful") were devised at around the same time as daguerrotypes by William Henry Fox Talbot, in England. Among his first photographs are those done at Lacock Abbey- the set used in the first Harry Potter movie! ...Nakalagay sa closing credits 'yun...:D

Calotypes can be considered as the forerunner of modern photography since it used a 'negative' and a 'positive'. The negatives were on paper, as well were the prints.

To make the negative, paper is first saturated with salt and iodine. Then it is floated on a solution of silver nitrate and gallic acid (native pyrogallol) for sensitisation. Whilst still moist, the sheet is loaded in a slide and exposed in the camera. The sheet can be left in the camera until a visible image appeared or else processed by futher development in gallic acid and fixing with strong salt solution. Later, thiosulphate replaced salt.

Since the initial picture was a negative, a positive was produced by printing on another sheet of 'salted' paper (calotypes are also known as salt prints). The negative acted as a light stencil, allowing light to pass through selectively to expose the sensitive paper underneath. Printing was done by placing the negative+salt paper sandwich under bright sunlight, and leaving it there until a positive image appeared on the paper. The resulting positive often appeared reddish brown, purple, or even pink. The image is usually toned in gold to make it more stable and denser, then fixed in thiosulphate.

The first book to be illustrated with photographs, "The Pencil of Nature" consisted of actual saltprints individually pasted on the book's pages.

Jay.

(begging for your indulgence for his long posts! :D)

Wow i thought it's just as simple as developing a film with a different chemistry. I wonder if anybody's still doing these prints since mercury is already banned. I want to see a daguerrotype print though. Is there one on display in MM?

Thanks a lot Jay.


There are still some people into daguerrotypes. If you go to APUG (Analogue Photography Users Group Forum), there are actually members there who still make 'dags'. They also talk about the methods and exchange tips on how to make them.

There are a few dags here in Manila. Mostly brought in by collectors. However, I believe that we didn't have dags which were shot here in the time they were popular. According to one historian, dags were already out of fashion (they were popular from 1839 to around 1850) by the time the first photograph was made in the Philippines. Either that, or no one around then cared to make one! :D

Mercury can still be obtained, with permission.

Jay

waayyyy to hard core for me. i think i will stick to film and have it sent to a lab:Grin:

An artist who is producing Cyanotypes and Van Dykes prints........
just if you are interested in seeing her work. No digital manipulation.

http://under-the-amber-moon.my-expressions.com/galleries/8583_1399210773/51396

Mike

this might interest you too!

http://www.tech2.com/india/news/general/worlds-oldest-camera-to-go-on-auction/4865/0

Hey Mitz, might wanna try the simple pinhole photography rather than those two types. hehehe:)

Some scans of cyanotype prints from 1992. Too bad I can't find the original prints on paper anymore.

Telefon. Shot with a 4x5 camera on BW TriX Pan Film. Contact printed on ordinary bond paper coated with cyanotype solution.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v93/zorkikat/CYT-01.jpg


"Patis Tesoro" Photographed with a circa 1930s Agfa 6X9cm Box camera on 120 ISO 400 Ilford HP5 film. Cyanotype on ordinary bond paper.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v93/zorkikat/CYT-Patis.jpg


Jay.

An 1839 daguerreotype camera, ancestor of modern photography, was sold at auction in Vienna Saturday (May 27, 2007) for nearly 600,000 euros making it the world's oldest and most expensive commercial photographic apparatus.

http://www.jerry.ph/susse.freres.jpg

For most of photography's history, the oldest commercially produced cameras were thought to be those manufactured by Daguerre's brother-in-law Alphonse Giroux, of which some ten survive. But behind the Giroux was a mystery: it was known that a sliding-box Daguerreotype camera had been advertised by a Paris firm called Susse Frères a mere ten days before the first announcement of the Giroux. No examples were known, and for many years it was doubted that any had ever existed.

http://bp2.blogger.com/_InTTA3tpeeo/Rjj4zp-KOOI/AAAAAAAAAZw/V3uMJMFgvI0/s320/Picture+19.png (http://bp2.blogger.com/_InTTA3tpeeo/Rjj4zp-KOOI/AAAAAAAAAZw/V3uMJMFgvI0/s1600-h/Picture+19.png)

Until, that is, one turned up recently in Germany. The camera to be auctioned by WestLicht is essentially an "attic find." "It was originally owned by Prof. Max Seddig (1877–1963)," reads the auction description, "who was the director of the Institute of Applied Physics in Frankfurt am Main and, among other things, godfather to the founding of the Josef Schneider Optical Works in Kreuznach. Seddig gave the camera to his assistant, Günter Haase, as a present. The latter was later Professor at the Department of Scientific Photography at the University of Frankfurt and, from 1970 on, occupied the Chair for Scientific Photography at the Technical University of Munich. Prof. Günter Haase died on February 20th 2006 at the age of 88 and left the camera to his son, Prof. Wolfgang Haase.



http://theonlinephotographer.blogspot.com/2007/05/legendary-1839-susse-frres.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6695739.stm
http://www.france24.com/france24Public/en/administration/afp-news.html?id=070526212150.z29jl00j&cat=null

i just read this in yahoo news...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070526/ap_on_re_eu/austria_oldest_camera


Regarding about the one of the worlds oldest camera A Daguerreotype by Susse Freres...


@jerry...i was posting this and your thread wasn't here...hahahaha..naunahan ako!:D