It’s been almost 20 years since John Coffer taught me to make tintypes, via the wet plate collodion process, at his Camp Tintype in Dundee, New York. These two videos were shot more than a decade ago but still ring true. This hand-crafted technique, first invented by Frederick Scott Archer in 1851, continually fascinates me. I think that’s mostly because it’s everything digital photography isn’t.
First of all, making tintypes is a relatively slow process. You can’t just point and shoot. Also, due to variables in lighting, craft and chance, no two images are exactly alike. Finally, each finished image is clearly human-crafted and something you can hold in your hands.
As the name implies, when making wet plate pictures, I have to coat, sensitize, expose, develop and fix the image while it is still wet. For this, I need a mobile darkroom or dark box. With the technique, I can make glass-plate negatives, tintypes or Ambrotypes — which are positive images on glass.
Outdoor exposures for portraits are usually in the four-to-eight second range. From coating the plate to having a finished image to look at takes about ten minutes. The final step is to dry and varnish the plate so the silver surface won’t tarnish.
I make my tintypes on black-coated aluminum plates. I never scan or make inkjet prints from my tintypes or Ambrotypes. When I make glass-plate negatives, I only produce hand-made prints in silver, salt, albumen or the like. I never use computers or mechanical printers.
