Tintype Photography

Photography Tips

It’s fair to say that technology is no stranger when it comes to photography. As new products enter the market, the old are forgotten. Not too along ago we watched the iconic Kodachrome fall to the wayside. Before that, countless other films and chemical process were abandoned. Tintype, a type of photography process that came to be in way back in the 1800s, may come as an unknown to many modern photographers. However, the collective of photographers that still produce tintypes are, albeit small, very dedicated to the technique. Check out the video below to learn more about the history of tintype:

Sounds pretty interesting, doesn’t it? Surprisingly, the process of producing a tintype isn’t all that complicated for those with darkroom experience. It’s actually quicker to make a tintype than produce a photograph using equipment from the same era, which helped tintypes take off as a medium in the first place. Here is another video documenting the process of making a tintype from start to finish:

As you saw in the videos above, the process is similar to the wet plate process. The negative is put on a steel plate, darkened, then coated with a photographic emulsion. The result is a photograph on a piece of steel that has a very vintage feel to it.

Tintype Photography

“Even shooting a modern subject, it almost looks like its from another time period…So you’re looking at something of today, but not necessarily of today,” cites tintype photographer, Bob Shimmin.