28.05.2006 Le premier carnet en langue anglaise, conçu par Lee Marks et John Deprez.

American Tintypists présentés par Lee Marks.

« For young subjects, a portrait session could be quite a terrifying experience. Consider that before a toddler reached the age of understanding, they were admonished to remain still for an eternity of many seconds. They were instructed to stare at a large camera and lens operated by an unfamiliar man who was mostly hidden beneath a black cloth.

Perhaps most frightening, all the while they were being held by either a total stranger, or worse still, their own mother who had been hidden beneath enough fabric to make her look more like an overstuffed chair than the child’s loving protectress.

America’s contribution of the tintype in the history of photography was a modest one compared to the dramatic inventions of the French daguerreotype and England’s paper negative.

Humble in appearance and price, the tintype nonetheless was extremely durable — both physically and commercially. It had a longer life span than the daguerreotype and ambrotype combined, and its popularity was more widespread than either process.

On February 19, 1856, the United States Patent Office issued a patent for the Melainotype (eventually called ferrotype, and finally, tintype) to Hamilton L. Smith, a professor at Kenyon College in Ohio.

Borrowing from the ambrotype on glass, Smith’s process involved brushing an opaque black or dark brown japan varnish on a thin iron (not tin) sheet. The sheet was then heated in a drying oven to harden and dry, producing a glossy, dark japanned surface on one or both sides. Just before inserting this sheet in the camera for exposure, it was coated with wet collodion, a highly flammable, viscous solution of nitrocellulose and alcohol to which silver salts were added.

mmediately following exposure, the plate was removed from the camera and developed. The finished product was a unique, laterally reversed, direct-positive image that could be duplicated only by rephotographing the entire object. »